House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) yesterday waded into the flap over the flameout of Energy Department-backed solar firm Solyndra, which has given his party fresh fuel for a long-running battle over government support for alternative energy.

While he stopped short of calling for the termination of the DOE loan program that gave Solyndra a $535 million guarantee in 2009, Boehner suggested in an interview with Fox Business Network that a House Energy and Commerce Committee probe of the company's demise should guide its future.

"I'm all for green energy -- I think it is the wave of the future," the Ohioan said. "But I think what's happened here is that the federal government has gone beyond the traditional role of fostering more research and development, and they have actually picked companies in which to invest major sums of money."

Energy and Commerce Committee leaders, Boehner added, are "working with the administration to determine whether any more of these loan guaranties are appropriate."

His comments came as backers of federal clean-energy loans race to ensure that Solyndra's bankruptcy -- and the likely loss to taxpayers of its half-billion-dollar guarantee -- does not permanently tar a DOE program that was once a cornerstone of the Obama administration's economic recovery effort.

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) released a statement today calling Solyndra an "isolated example" and charging Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans with attacking green-power loans as a favor to fossil-fuel interests that donated to their campaigns. Green groups also sought to spotlight media reports of GOP Solyndra critics seeking federal assistance for clean energy projects in their home states (Greenwire, Sept. 19).

The tussle over Solyndra also began to reach beyond Congress' environmental committees yesterday. House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) urged the Justice Department to name an independent investigator to look at DOE's motivations for altering the terms of its loan to the solar firm, a restructuring that stands to put the government behind other private investors in line to be repaid during bankruptcy proceedings.

"An independent investigator will uncover the truth about whether politics played a role in influencing the Obama administration to favor Solyndra over more financially stable loan applicants and thus ensure the integrity of the bankruptcy process for all creditors," Smith wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

In addition, the solar bankruptcy also began drawing attention back to other forms of federal alternative-energy incentives. Boehner cited ethanol tax benefits in his Fox Business Network interview "as an example" of government supports likely to expire at the end of 2011 "because a lot of people in other industries, other forms of energy, think that this is an unfair advantage."

Click here to read Smith's letter to DOJ.