Members of a House Republican investigations panel who already see the Solyndra bankruptcy as a radioactive election-year scandal pushed through their subpoena yesterday of White House documents relating to the solar power firm's demise.

The end game for this potential constitutional powers face-off may or may not resolve whether the Obama administration has stalled the inquiry to shield embarrassing documents.

GOP members of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee repeated that charge yesterday. Democrats answered that the Republican inquiry is an unrestrained political fishing expedition that could claim access to President Obama's personal BlackBerry, as one committee Democrat put it.

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 Solyndra has clearly shot holes in the administration's signature effort to put U.S. clean energy innovators on a fast track to commercial success, a campaign to keep the United States in step with China, Germany and other nations that have committed to solar and wind power and other climate-friendly energy technologies.

Former Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas) said yesterday that Solyndra's failure following a rushed approval of a $535 million federal loan guarantee in 2009 "has tainted the entire alternative energy program." Barton, who supported the loan guarantee program in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, said, "we now have people on my side of the aisle making serious recommendations to terminate the entire program because it is just not well-run."

Current Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said Solyndra has "plagued the whole issue of alternative energy."

In fact, the Obama administration's clean energy technology initiatives, supported by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, may generate examples across a spectrum of successes, missteps and failures, based on the scope of the projects that received backing. The final scorecard of winners and losers may not be clear for years.

"There were going to be some companies that did not work out; Solyndra was one of them," President Obama said recently. "But the process by which the decision was made was on the merits. It was straightforward. And of course there were going to be debates internally when you're dealing with something as complicated as this."

The start of a parade of winners and losers

Kevin Smith, CEO of SolarReserve, said his company -- also a recipient of a $737 million Department of Energy loan guarantee -- received approval for its utility-scale solar project only after a comprehensive two-year scrutiny by DOE and other reviewers. "There was a tremendous amount of due diligence by the DOE," he said in an interview.

Unlike Solyndra, whose unique rooftop solar units were fatally undermined by cheaper silicon-based solar modules from China, the sale of SolarReserve's energy is guaranteed by a 25-year purchase power agreement with Nevada's NV Energy utility, in response to the state's renewable energy mandate.

"The power contract has been fully approved by the Public Utility Commission in Nevada," Smith said. "It's fully enforceable and can't be changed by state policy."

The plant collects the sun's energy, reflected from surrounding mirrors onto a tower that superheats molten salt, which then generates steam to produce electricity. The molten salt is stored underground, permitting power to keep flowing after sundown. Smith said the project fulfills an earlier DOE research project that developed the technology.

More bad news is likely from other challenged DOE initiatives, however. Beacon Power Corp., a Massachusetts developer of "flywheel-based" energy storage systems, filed for bankruptcy protection last Sunday. It received a $43 million Energy Department loan guarantee in August 2010.

DOE has used the loan guarantee program to try to jump-start U.S. production of lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, another top-priority administration initiative. But the U.S. firms had to catch front-runners South Korea and Japan and deal with a rapid buildup of manufacturing capacity in China. The result is a glut of capacity that will force some producers out of business, analysts predict.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu acknowledged from the start that the administration's attempt to catalyze a competitive U.S. clean-technology industry with federal dollars was risky.

"We are responsible for developing the technology that will make us competitive in the future years," Chu said at a meeting of his science advisory panel in September 2010. "I feel that the future of the U.S. in large part rests on how we modernize our energy infrastructure, how we use and produce energy and whether we will be a world leader ... or a follower."

China, Chu said, is pursuing advances in grid technology; solar, wind and nuclear power; and supercritical coal plants. "In all of these things, they are installing some of the latest, best technology in the world," he said. "Once installed, and they have operating experience, they would like to export it, as well. ... That's the competition."

Legacy from spending $35B

John Deutch, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and former undersecretary of Energy, counseled Chu at the meeting to go cautiously. "I urge you to stick to the technology performance and cost targets," he said, rather than elusive goals of competitiveness over which the department has no direct influence.

But DOE had an unprecedented $35 billion war chest to spend, thanks to the Recovery Act, which allowed the department to drastically expand the 2005 loan guarantee program for renewable energy, power transmission and biofuels projects.

"The loan guarantee program had not properly documented and as such could not always readily demonstrate how it resolved or mitigated relevant risks prior to granting loan guarantees," DOE Inspector General George Friedman testified to Congress this week.

"Even under ideal circumstances, the Recovery Act established challenging goals for the department," Friedman said.

The entire DOE initiative was doomed to failure, said one economist and former government official, W. David Montgomery, a senior vice president of NERA Economic Consulting.

Montgomery testified this week before a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that trying to use federal dollars to launch clean-energy companies inevitably fails because there is no market demand for the technologies -- they survive only with the help of subsidies or government mandates.

"Loans, loan guarantees and direct funding of new energy technologies will amount to nothing more than pushing on a string unless Congress decides to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions or allows EPA to mandate adoption of those specific technologies," he said.

"The current effort to promote green energy is the most recent example of failed efforts at industrial policy that have recurred throughout my 35-year career in Washington. Using taxpayer money for loans or loan guarantees for commercial energy projects that cannot raise capital from the normal sources can only lead to waste of taxpayers' money," said Montgomery, who served in the Energy Department in President Reagan's administration.

Will a long history of U.S. pragmatism continue?

Kent Hughes, who heads the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars' Program on America and the Global Economy, counters that the choices made by energy markets in the short run may not serve the nation's long-run interests, and clean energy is a prime example.

If elected leaders decide that a particular industry is vital to the United States' future and want to make that a national priority, it is asking a lot to expect that publicly traded American companies will carry the flag by themselves against foreign rivals backed by strong, consistent government assistance, he said.

"It's very tough for an American private-sector company, acting on its own, to go into the ring with the proverbial 800-pound gorilla," said Hughes, a Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration.

A lot of experts believe electric vehicles will eventually be a big market and an important factor in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector, he said. "Do we want the U.S. to be in that market? If so, we have to think of strategies that recognize we are facing competition from active partnerships of government and industry" abroad, he said.

"As we look around [at other countries], we realize that we're not talking about trading wine for cloth," in the classic economic model. "We're talking about national systems that create economic advantage. Are we investing in a way that will create advantage for us in the high value-added products of the future? That takes a shift in thinking," he said.

"American has a lot of cultural strengths: resiliency, mobility, a long history of pragmatism. ... What do we do if [advanced] batteries turn out to be important? What is the American solution to that?"

"I think this debate will continue," he said. "But really, we've got to have a serious discussion about this."