The leaders of the Senate panel with jurisdiction over the Energy Department's troubled renewable energy financing program have no plans to launch a formal investigation into its controversial loan guarantee to Solyndra LLC.

At least four congressional and executive branch investigations are currently under way about the scandal surrounding the Obama administration's $535 million loan guarantee to the now-collapsed solar company. But Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, respectively, said last night that they do not plan to increase that number.

SPECIAL REPORT

Solyndra, a solar manufacturer that was given a $535 million loan guarantee and touted by the White House as a model for the clean energy economy, has filed for bankruptcy. E&E examines how it got there and what it means. Click here to read the report.

"You've got several other investigations going -- and obviously we'll monitor what comes out of those -- but I haven't scheduled a hearing," Bingaman told reporters in the Capitol.

Murkowski, separately, said she was not going to push for a Senate probe into the scandal.

"I'm not thinking that we as an energy panel will push forward our own independent investigation on top of all we're seeing," she said last night. "I think it will be important to take up what we learn when some of these investigations have been concluded."

But Murkowski said she hopes the panel will take a look at the agency's loan guarantee program as a whole.

"What I do want to know is that the structures within DOE are good and sound and everybody really knows what they're doing," she said. "I think that this is a legitimate role of the energy committee, to conduct a hearing to ascertain whether ... we've got a program that works as we intended."

Bingaman and Murkowski made their remarks as President Obama told ABC News yesterday that he did not regret his administration's support for the California solar company.

Murkowski said she has specific concerns about changes that were made to the loan guarantee program in the 2009 stimulus law. The Solyndra loan was issued under the stimulus program.

"I want to know that we've got a loan guarantee program that actually works so that's what I'll be working with the chairman on," Murkowski said, adding that she had held conversations with Bingaman about such a hearing.

Controversy has swirled in recent weeks about DOE's loan guarantee to Solyndra -- the Obama administration's first -- after the company filed for bankruptcy in August.

House Republicans have launched an aggressive probe into the loan guarantee and have used the scandal to raise questions about the agency's renewable energy financing program -- and stimulus spending -- as a whole.

But Bingaman, for one, thinks that is a bad idea.

"There are clearly a bunch of people here in Congress who don't support the idea that the government should partner with industry to help ensure that the U.S. has these types of projects, but when we adopted the loan guarantee program, it was a bipartisan proposal," said Bingaman, who helped usher in the program as part of a broad 2005 energy law. "I think it made good sense as national policy then, and I think it still does."

Bingaman added that the United States could lose its competitive edge by abandoning its efforts to help advance clean energy technologies.

"There's clearly some that are opposed to the government doing anything in these areas. They feel that if the private sector can't do these projects on their own, they shouldn't happen," Bingaman added. "The problem is the Chinese government doesn't feel that way. The German government doesn't feel that way. The Japanese government doesn't feel that way. And if we're going to be involved in any of this new technology deployment ... as a government we're going to have to participate with industry and help them do it. That's my view."

No pay-off

Obama yesterday called the more than half-a-billion dollars the federal government sunk into Solyndra a "good bet" that simply didn't pay off.

Nearly 17 months after visiting Solyndra's California plant and holding it up as an example of what the future of renewable energy holds, Obama drew a different lesson from Solyndra yesterday. He said that the demise of the company proves that not every investment the government makes in developing the technologies of the future will pan out.

"There are going to be some failures, and Solyndra's an example," Obama said in an online interview with ABC News.

But he also said those stumbles should not keep the government from trying to help U.S. companies compete in a worldwide marketplace that is seeing foreign powers throw billions of dollars at efforts in their own countries.

"We've got to make sure that our guys here in the United States of America at least have a shot," Obama said.

Congressional Republicans are pointing to the downfall of Solyndra as a prime example of the Obama administration's failure to create jobs through stimulus spending. Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have charged that the political connections of Solyndra donors had more to do with the company receiving a $535 million loan guarantee than the viability of the product it was producing.

But Democrats on the committee said yesterday that a review of hundreds of pages of documents from DOE, the Office of Management and Budget and the White House indicates that while administration officials read Solyndra's financial outlook differently, political considerations were not a factor in the company's loan guarantee (E&ENews PM, Oct. 3).

"Hindsight is always 20/20," Obama said in the interview. But Solyndra's loan, he said, "went through the regular review process and people felt like this was a good bet."