Today's highly anticipated congressional hearing on Solyndra represents a test on multiple levels for Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

After an eight-month-long investigation, Chu will finally have the chance to defend his agency against Republican charges that it failed to protect taxpayer dollars in issuing a half-billion-dollar loan guarantee to a solar energy company that went bankrupt less than two years later. Republicans have questioned both the intelligence and legality of DOE decisions related to Solyndra.

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.

But today's Energy and Commerce Committee hearing will also be viewed as a test of how far the Nobel Prize-winning Chu has come from the lab setting to the bareknuckle world of Washington politics.

While even Republicans acknowledge Chu's scientific expertise, Chu's political skills have long been questioned. Documents released to the public as part of House Republicans' Solyndra probe show that even key campaign advisers to President Obama have wondered whether Chu is cut out for the political aspects of a Cabinet post (Greenwire, Nov. 14).

Today, as he seeks to contain an investigation that has developed into a major political headache for the Obama administration, Chu's abilities to manage a crisis and handle himself under questioning from members of Congress who have long been building their case on Solyndra will be put to the test.

According to testimony released yesterday evening, Chu plans to meet the challenge in part by relying on his image as the consummate scientist.

Chu will testify that every decision he made about Solyndra was made with the best interests of the taxpayer in mind.

"I want to be clear: over the course of Solyndra's loan guarantee, I did not make any decision based on political considerations," Chu will testify today. "My decision to guarantee a loan to Solyndra was based on the analysis of experienced professionals and on the strength of the information they had available to them at the time."

Chu will testify that the Solyndra transaction went through more than two years of "rigorous technical, financial and legal due diligence" before a loan guarantee was issued.

'A spear carrier'

Chu's testimony comes as House Republicans continue to charge that his efforts to shepherd the solar energy project through the DOE loan guarantee process were done at the behest of a White House that was seeking to reward political allies and campaign donors.

But even some of the White House's toughest critics seemed hesitant yesterday to blame Chu too much.

Chu "is a very credible guy on scientific merit. ... He's going to have to answer some pretty straight questions, but he is not the focus of this investigation," said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) a senior member of the committee who serves on the investigations panel that has been probing the Solyndra deal.

"From a scientific standpoint, [Chu] is a stellar Energy secretary. We may question his management skills, or lack there of," Barton said. But "Secretary Chu is a spear carrier. ... He serves at the pleasure of the president."

Barton said that the email traffic that the committee has uncovered has shown a disturbing level of interaction between the Department of Energy and the White House when it came to Solyndra. He questioned whether top officials in the Obama administration took advantage of Chu's lack of political experience and used their influence to get DOE to reconsider the Solyndra program after it had been put on hold in the last days of the George. W. Bush administration.

"If you were the new kid on the block and just rode into town, why in the world would you resurrect a project that the previous administration had questions about" unless the call came from higher up, Barton said.

Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who released a report last night pushing back against various criticisms of DOE that Republicans have raised leading up to today's hearing, said that he hopes Chu will be treated "with the respect he deserves" when he comes before Congress today.

"He's handled everything properly and he's a distinguished man," Waxman said.

But, he added, "I know that the Republicans are anxious to score a lot of political points."