Two months after appearing at a House subcommittee hearing titled "The Obama Administration's Green Energy Gamble," executives from Colorado-based Abound Solar will be back on Capitol Hill this week having lost their bet.

The cadmium-telluride solar panel manufacturing company, which has been financially struggling for months, announced at the end of June that it was filing for bankruptcy, and in so doing, the company opened up the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program to a new round of criticism.

When they appear Wednesday before the House Government and Oversight Reform Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending, Abound executives will be joined by the current and former directors of the DOE Loan Programs Office who oversaw the $400 million taxpayer-backed loan guarantee that was awarded to the company.

The hearing will mark the first time that former DOE loan program Executive Director Jonathan Silver will be back before a congressional committee since leaving the department last fall. Silver stepped down just weeks after House Republicans began calling for his resignation amid the fallout from the bankruptcy of the California-based Solyndra solar company, which blew through $535 million in loan money before shutting its doors. DOE said at the time that Silver's departure was voluntary.

This is not the first time that Silver's name has come up in the Oversight Committee's investigation of the loan program. During the May hearing, Republicans released emails that indicate Silver was using his personal email account to conduct loan program business during his time at the agency. Last week, Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) directed Silver, who is now at centrist think tank Third Way, to turn over communications from his personal email account that relate to his work as executive director of the loan program (E&ENews PM, July 12).

The timing of Abound's bankruptcy couldn't have been worse for DOE. The news has given Republicans a new cudgel to hit DOE with at a time when the controversy over Solyndra had started to wind down.

Still, the financial loss won't be nearly as bad with Abound as it was with Solyndra. DOE officials have pointed out that Abound had only drawn down $68 million in government funding because department officials, who were concerned about the company's future as early as last fall, froze the company's loan in September.

And the politics of the Abound loss will be trickier for Republicans, as a number of high-profile GOP politicians -- from Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar and Gov. Mitch Daniels to senior Oversight Committee member Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana -- vocally supported the company when it applied for its loan.

But the hearing is sure to be no picnic for Abound CEO Craig Witsoe and board Chairman Tom Tiller.

When Witsoe appeared before the subcommittee in May alongside a handful of executives from other loan guarantee recipients, he expressed hope that the fortunes of his company could be turned around with the development of the company's new high-efficiency solar modules.

"Extreme price actions by Chinese companies believed to be selling solar panels below cost ... has had a harmful effect on many American solar manufacturing companies, including Abound," Witsoe said in his testimony at the time.

"Instead of matching Chinese price levels and selling panels at a loss, Abound ... made the difficult decision to shut down our current-generation module production, to accelerate development of our next-generation 85-watt thin film module. ... At scale, we believe that Abound's thin film solar modules can be built by American workers with good-paying jobs, at lower cost per watt than competing crystalline-silicon solar modules made with low-cost labor in China."

After the Abound bankruptcy was announced last month, subcommittee ranking member Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said he supported an investigation to determine what lessons could be learned from the high-profile failures in the loan program. But he also said he was worried that Republicans might use the hearing to dismiss all government investment in renewable energy development.

"The bankruptcy of a solar energy company does not have a bearing on the technology; it has a bearing on business management," Kucinich said. "This is a business management issue, and it should not be confused with a technology issue."

Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, July 18, at 10 a.m. in 2154 Rayburn.

Witness: Abound CEO Craig Witsoe; Abound Chairman of the Board Tom Tiller; DOE Loan Program Office acting Executive Director David Frantz; and former Loan Program Office Executive Director Jonathan Silver.