After making the $535 million failed loan guarantee a top focus of its oversight efforts in the 112th Congress, it appears that the new year will be Solyndra-less for the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

"We've done that. I don't know that there's more to dig up," committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said yesterday when asked if Solyndra would be back on the panel's agenda in the 113th Congress.

Over the past two years, the committee's Oversight and Investigations subpanel collected more than 300,000 pages of documents, conducted 14 interviews, held five hearings, issued three subpoenas and wrote a 147-page report regarding the failed energy company, which received funding through a controversial Department of Energy loan program.

But while the probe was politically embarrassing for the Obama administration -- and provided plenty of cable news fodder -- it fell short of proving the Republican claim that Obama used the DOE loan program as a way to move money to an influential campaign contributor.

Panel ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who harshly criticized Upton's Solyndra probe for being a political exercise, said yesterday that he is in agreement with Upton that the panel is done with Solyndra.

"It's old news," Waxman said. "There's nothing more to know about it. They've run that one dry."

Upton declined to name specific new investigations he expects to launch in the next Congress and said that topic is on his agenda for a retreat he has scheduled for his committee members next month.

The chairman offered praise for Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), whom he tapped at the end of last month to take over the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee from outgoing Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.).

"He and I have already begun to sit down and talk about a number of avenues we would like to proceed on" in the subcommittee, Upton said. Murphy has "meshed well with the staff that's there," he said.

For his part, Murphy also seemed inclined yesterday to close the door on Solyndra.

"We investigated Solyndra for a long period of time; a report's been filed and completed there," he said. "There's a lot of other issues in energy and environment and health care, the health care bill. There's issues now that have merged with regard to public safety, school safety, mental health issues" in the wake of last week's elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

On the energy and environmental front, Murphy didn't want to discuss specific issues but offered broad topics that the committee might pursue, including "natural gas and coal, oil exploration, what's happens with wind and solar, what's happening with government money."

In an interview with E&E Daily last week, Stearns said one issue he would likely have pursued if he were coming back for another term would be how DOE grants and loan dollars are accounted for when companies that receive those funds are sold to foreign-based businesses.

The topic came up last week when a bankrupt electric-car battery maker that had previously received a quarter-billion-dollar grant from DOE announced that it plans to sell most of its assets to the U.S. arm of a Chinese auto manufacturer.

Stearns said he would encourage Murphy to possibly look into the sale of Michigan- and Massachusetts-based A123 Systems, but Murphy said he had yet to have a conversation with Stearns about it.

Murphy added that he is spending time this week and next meeting with all the current and incoming panel members to feel them out for topics they would like the subcommittee to explore over the next two years.

"I want to be effective and efficient; those are the key things," Murphy said. "I've been telling all the committee members that this is going to be a fact-based committee. Whatever people bring to the table, I want to make sure they've studied them thoroughly so we know exactly what's going on."