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Ener1, Parent of Obama-Backed Green Company, Files for Bankruptcy -

The parent company of an electric car battery maker that received more than $100 million in government funding from the Obama administration has filed for bankruptcy protection, the company announced Thursday.

Alex Sorokin, the CEO for lithium-ion battery manufacturer Ener1, said the company suffered when demand for the batteries dropped as fewer Americans than expected opted for electric cars.

"This was a difficult, but necessary, decision for our company," Sorokin said in a statement on its website. "We moved aggressively to reduce costs and shift focus when the marketplace did not evolve as quickly as anticipated. Our business plan was impacted when demand for lithium-ion batteries slowed due to lower-than-expected adoption for electric passenger vehicles."

EnerDel, a subsidiary of Ener1 dedicated to making batteries for electric cars, was awarded a $118 million grant from the Energy Department in 2009 as part of President Obama's economic stimulus package and green energy push. Ener1 said that the bankruptcy filing and newly announced company restructuring would allow its subsidiaries, including EnerDel, to "continue normal operation."

The filing came exactly a year after Vice President Joe Biden visited an Ener1 manufacturing plant in Indiana where he proclaimed the company was the "start" to reshaping the way Americans drive and "the way Americans power their lives."

"A year and a half ago, this administration made a judgment. We decided it's not sufficient to create new jobs -- we have to create whole new industries," Biden told the plant workers then. "We're back in the game."

Ener1's financial collapse prompted a comparison to the doomed solar energy company Solyndra from Rep. Cliff Sterns, R.-Fla., who has been one of President Obama's most vocal critics concerning the green energy loan guarantee initiative. Solynda received more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer money as a loan guarantee from the Energy Department in 2009, two years before it collapsed in August 2011.

Like Biden at Ener1, President Obama toured a Solyndra plant in California in May 2010 where he touted its potential.

"As with his comments touting Solyndra, Biden's remarks on Ener1 show how wrong the Obama Administration has been with these loan guarantees and grants," Sterns said on his website. "Instead of producing thousands of 'clean energy' jobs, the Administration's loan guarantee and grant programs are yielding another bankruptcy and the squandering of taxpayer dollars."

Solyndra is now the target of a federal criminal investigation aimed at determining whether the company was awarded the massive loan thanks to undue political influence, despite what critics said were visible signs the company was already in financial trouble.

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Stimulus-Backed Solar Company Lays off 70 Percent of Workforce -

President Obama used a weekly address in July 2010 to tout his stimulus package’s support for the solar industry. One of the companies he mentioned specifically, Abound Solar, just announced that it will lay off 70 percent of its workforce.

Abound would “creat[e] more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs,” Obama claimed, and would be integral to the administration’s quest to “create whole new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs in America.”

But a year and a half later, the company’s staff numbers only 120. It announced Tuesday that it would lay off 180 full time and 100 part time employees, halt solar panel production, and delay the construction of a manufacturing plant in Indiana

Abound received a $400 million loan guarantee under the Energy Department’s Section 1705 renewable energy loan program, which also gave a $535 million guarantee to now-bankrupt Solyndra. Abound has drawn $70 million of its loan guarantee, and won’t be able to draw any more until it resumes production.

Steve Abely, the company’s chief financial officer, rejected comparisons between Abound and Solyndra. “Solyndra cells were never cost competitive,” he insisted. “We are competitive.”

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Originally posted by kenlori:
Meanwhile...it was reported in the Pittsburgh papers today that 7 coal powered power plants in PA have begun plans to shut down because the cost of Obamas new polution standards did not make them profitable. One plant in 2007 spent $7 million on the latest pollution technology...

Who is Obama blaming for rising energy prices????

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Originally posted by Celtic Warrior:
Nuclear energy is safe and efficient, even when built on fault lines, in potential tsunami coastline, in tornado alley, and on river floodplains. No threat of asthma with nuke energy.

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Originally posted by glitterbootygirl:

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Originally posted by kenlori:
Meanwhile...it was reported in the Pittsburgh papers today that 7 coal powered power plants in PA have begun plans to shut down because the cost of Obamas new polution standards did not make them profitable. One plant in 2007 spent $7 million on the latest pollution technology...

Who is Obama blaming for rising energy prices????

I was part of getting these 2 closed in Chicago. One of them is over 100 years old. The emissions kill people. Easier to switch to alternative sources of energy than retrofit a 100-year old plant in the middle of Chicago. ... there are no viable "alternative " energies to date to replace coal...

While Greenpeace activists were doing this, we were downtown at the EPA hearings giving testimony on Mercury Rule, we brought in thousands of NAACP, Native American, and environmentalist activists throughout Illinois, Indiana, Michigan. meanwhile, more mercury will be released into the atmosphere from Obamas new curly light bulbs than the old coal stations could ever dream of!

Really kenny, you claim to be a Christian but can't understand that businesses should be safe for human beings? You have 5 kids, any of them with asthma? The parents of the kids in Little Village were taking their kids to the ER for asthma attacks more times than anywhere else in Illinois. Asthma kills people, kenny....more personal attacks on my Christianity and assumptions...I know more about asthma and have experienced more with asthma than you will ever know...and we do not live anywhere near a power station...

Nationally, asthma affects about 10% of kids, but in Little Village it was more like 50%. Some places are higher, and some are lower...that is why we talk about "averages"...

This is acceptable to you kenny? Let businesses make a profit while killing children (and the elderly?)

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...in a 100 percent efficient (no such thing) nuclear reactor one single hydrogen atom could provide enough power to meet the need of Los Angeles for a month!

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Nuclear energy may be very efficient, but the dangers are beyond what human beings can be trusted with.