Thursday, December 8, 2011

Brother in law Ron Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi’s Connection to Tonopah Solar Energy

Looks like the Ron and Nancy Pelosi's are out to rob the American People and this is NOT hitting the News. They are now investing in Solar Energy which is not reliable and works only in states that have continuous sunshine. I should know I had solar energy in Florida for my pool and my hot water and its a rip off. The panels cost you a fortune and are destroyed after majors storms. Nancy is keeping it the Family in stealing from the American People, No Senators or Congressman relatives should be allowed to apply for grants. This is earmarking and pork Bellying.
Vote for Leah Lax and make this practice of stealing to end. WWW.LEAHLAX.com Contribute money to her campaign


Ron Pelosi’s Connection to Tonopah Solar Energy

Posted on December 8, 2011
Q: Did the Energy Department give a loan to an energy company connected to Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law?
A: Yes. The loan was awarded to Tonopah Solar Energy for a project in Nevada. Ron Pelosi is an executive with Pacific Corporate Group, an investment partner in Tonopah’s parent company.
FULL QUESTION
This came from a typically unreliable source, any truth to it?
The Solar thing just got a little more interesting…….REALLY!
The Tonopah Solar company in Harry Reid’s Nevada is getting a $737 million loan from Obama’s DOE.
The project will produce a 110 megawatt power system and employ 45 permanent workers.
That’s costing us just $16 million per job.
One of the investment partners in this endeavor is Pacific Corporate Group (PCG).
The PCG executive director is Ron Pelosi who is the brother to Nancy’s husband.
Just move along folks…..nuthin goin on here.
FULL ANSWER
Shortly after the solar energy company Solyndra filed for bankruptcy — after receiving a $535 million loan from the Department of Energy — we received several emails from readers asking us to look into the claims made in the chain email above. It gets some of the basic facts correct.
  • It’s true that Tonopah Solar Energy, a subsidiary of SolarReserve, received a $737 million loan from the government to build a new solar facility in Nevada.
  • It’s also true that the project is expected to create 45 permanent jobs. However, many construction jobs also would be supported. Furthermore, there’s no indication at present that the loan won’t be repaid. So it’s misleading to claim it is costing taxpayers $16 million per job.
  • And it’s true that Pacific Corporate Group, an investor in SolarReserve, employs Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law, Ron Pelosi, as an executive.
What we can’t say one way or the other is whether the loan the company received from the Energy Department had anything to do with Ron Pelosi, as the email suggests. We spoke to company officials for SolarReserve and PCG, and they denied that Pelosi had any influence on the loan. They also stated to us that Ron Pelosi’s compensation agreement does not allow him to benefit personally from the loan, a statement we are not in a position to confirm or dispute.
The Loan
The Department of Energy announced on Sept. 28 that it had “finalized a $737 million loan guarantee to Tonopah Solar Energy LLC to develop the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project” in Nevada. The 110 megawatt solar power tower will be the “first of its kind in the United States and the tallest molten salt tower in the world,” according to a press release from the department.
The project, which had the backing of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and the state’s former Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons, is expected to generate enough renewable electricity topower up to 75,000 homes at peak hours.
The email claims that the project will “employ 45 permanent workers … costing us just $16 million per job.” But that math is misleading. The project is expected to create 45 permanent jobs, according to figures available on the website of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office. But in addition to those permanent positions, the project could create as many as 600 construction jobs over a 30-month period and “more than 4,300 direct, indirect and induced jobs” throughout the country, according to Kevin Smith, the chief executive officer of SolarReserve.
More important, if things go according to plan, the government might actually make money on the deal. SolarReserve anticipates paying back the government’s loan with interest, Smith said.
Smith, Nov. 4: It’s important to stress that this is a loan that earns the government an approximately 4% annual interest rate. This is not an ‘expenditure’ by the government, but rather a loan that has to be fully paid back with interest so it should not cost the tax payers any money at all.
And Smith said that the project, which is just starting the construction phase, already has a 25-year purchase agreement to sell 100 percent of the electricity generated to NV Energy, the largest utility company in Nevada. “This essentially ensures the project has the revenue stream necessary to pay back the loan,” he said.
The Pelosi Connection
On Sept. 29, the conservative Weekly Standard called the loan an example of “crony capitalism” in a blog post, citing, in part, Ron Pelosi’s connection to SolarReserve through PCG. That blog item was then featured temporarily on the Drudge Report under the heading: “Crony Capitalism: Massive Solar Loan Benefits Pelosi’s Kin.”
Ron Pelosi, who joined PCG back in the spring, had been employed by the company at the executive level for several months when the loan for the project was finalized in September. But did he have anything to do with the loan going through?
Fortune.com called this “the next fake solar scandal” on its website. And the San Francisco Chroniclelabeled the claims of “crony capitalism” erroneous, reporting that the Energy Department officials and Rep. Nancy Pelosi had called the claims “absurd.”
We can’t say definitively whether Ron Pelosi had anything to do with the loan or not. But, for what it’s worth, officials for SolarReserve and PCG deny that he did.
Smith, SolarReserve’s CEO, told FactCheck.org in an email that PCG “does not have a seat on our Board and have had no direct activity in any project and have done no lobbying on our behalf.” He even went so far as to say that he “never met or talked to Ron Pelosi and did not even know he existed” until after the project’s final financing was announced in September.
Smith also said that PCG has just a 2 percent investment in SolarReserve (through some New York pension funds). He didn’t provide us with any documentation to that effect, however.
PCG spokesman Brian Maddox also denied that Pelosi, or anyone else from the company, had lobbied for the Energy Department to make the loan to SolarReserve. In an exchange of emails with FactCheck.org, Maddox said that Pelosi was employed at the time the loan was finalized, but that PCG’s investment in SolarReserve “substantially antecedes” the time when Pelosi joined the company.
More to the point, he also said that Pelosi “is not compensated on the performance” of that investment. But even though we asked, Maddox didn’t provide us with any documentation of the basis for Pelosi’s compensation.
– Dave Bloom, with D’Angelo Gore
Sources
Smith, Kevin, CEO SolarReserve. Email Sent to FactCheck.org. 4 Nov 2011.
Maddox, Brian, PCG Spokesman. Email Sent to FactCheck.org. 9 Nov 2011.
Department of Energy. “DOE Finalizes $737 Million Loan Guarantee to Tonopah Solar Energy for Nevada Project.” Press release.  28 Sep 2011.
Hemingway, Mark. “Crony Capitalism: $737 Million Green Jobs Loan Given to Nancy Pelosi’s Brother-In-Law.” WeeklyStandard.com. 29 Sep 2011.
Garofoli, Joe. “Pelosi brother-in-law not tied to solar project.” San Francisco Chronicle. 30 Sep 2011.
Primack, Dan. “The next fake solar scandal.” Fortune.com. 29 Sep 2011.
POSTED BY FACTCHECK.ORG ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2011 AT 4:47 PM FILED UNDER ASK FACTCHECK. TAGGED WITH , , .
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