Cause of Action, a government watchdog group, is representing XP Vehicles and Limnia Inc. in two separate lawsuits in two different courts against the Department of Energy, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and director of the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing [ATVM] loan program Lachlan Seward.

The Department of Energy is guilty of an implied breach of contract and unconstitutional taking of private property and of violating a federal statute protecting confidential information, constitutional due process protections, and the Administrative Procedures Act, the plaintiffs allege.

Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action, said XPV was an “innovative start-up company” with the potential to reshape the American automobile market that had suffered “severe due process violations” at the hands of the government.

XPV had developed an all-electric powered car that used “polymer plastics and skinned expanded foam pressure membranes to replace metal doors, body panels, hoods, and roofs on a lightweight alloy frame,” according to the complaint filed in the Court of Federal Claims. The car was designed to be extremely light and affordable.

The ATVM loan program was ideal for XPV and Limnia as it allows the government to take “very high risks” on innovative companies who would have trouble accessing capital in the market, Epstein said.

XPV applied for an ATVM loan late in 2008 and Limnia in early 2009. The DOE’s “own Excel comparison matrices … placed XPV in the top 5 percent of all applicants,” the complaint states.

XPV’s loan was delayed and eventually denied despite assurances that the loan application was on track. Limnia’s loan was denied just over two months after it applied.

ATVM loan recipients Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors received special help from the Department of Energy on their applications, with Fisker getting free use of DOE conference rooms and “extraordinary access to DOE staff time,” according to the complaint. Fisker has since experienced financial and supply-chain troubles that have delayed its manufacturing.

Fisker and Tesla received help and ultimately their loans because they were politically connected to the government, the suit alleges.

XPV and Limnia sought explanations from the DOE after their loan applications were denied.

According to the complaint, the explanations the department provided are inadequate and misleading. For example, the department cited the fact that XPV’s all-electric SUV did not use E85 gasoline as one reason for denying its application.

The DOE’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious” and in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, Epstein said.

XPV and Limnia argue that their applications’ denial along with the success of their competitors’ applications demonstrates political cronyism.

“In truth, DOE’s ATVM Loan Program was nothing more than a veil for political officials to steer hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to government cronies, including Tesla and Fisker,” states the complaint.

The Department of Energy did not return a request for comment.

XPV and Limnia also allege that the Department of Energy leaked their patented technology to competitors General Motors and Ford.

XPV and Limnia transferred so-called “protected information” to the Department of Energy through Sandia National Laboratories multiple times between 2002 and 2009. The information included patented energy-storage and pressure membrane technology. The department was bound by law to keep this information confidential.

Nevertheless, an XPV representative touring Sandia in September 2008 spotted a presentation for General Motors that incorporated Limnia’s energy-storage technology.

“When Sandia scientists Chris Moen and Daniel Dedrick were informed of this discovery, they admitted that there might be ‘a problem with that’ and suggested XPV and Limnia contact GM for a ‘partnership’ so that ‘there was no acrimony,’” the suit states.

A Sandia spokesman said Sandia does not discuss “pending litigation as a matter of policy.”

XPV and Limnia also discovered late last year that Ford had incorporated their patented technology into its own plans without their knowledge. The DOE is “the only plausible conduit through which Ford obtained” Limnia and XPV’s patented and legally protected information, according to the suit.

Ford received $5.907 billion in loans from the DOE, more than 70 percent of the total amount loaned through the ATVM program.

GM did not return a request for comment.

The loans were competitively awarded, Ford spokeswoman Christin Baker said.

“Ford and Nissan were among the first companies selected to participate in the DOE program after meeting a stringent financial viability test. Ford entered into a loan agreement with DOE in 2009 and the company will pay back the entirety of this loan—with interest,” she wrote in an email to the Free Beacon.

William Yeatman, an energy policy expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the lawsuit illustrates the dangers of cronyism.

“Whenever the government engages in industrial policy (i.e., whenever the government tries to create industries out of whole cloth, like the ‘green energy’ industry), politics invariably corrupts the process,” Yeatman wrote in an email.

Citing Peter Schweizer’s book Throw Them All Out, Yeatman noted “$16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted by the stimulus-created loan guarantee program ‘went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.’”

Cause of Action’s Epstein said the lawsuit shows “what happens when you have the government picking winners and losers.”

Limnia and XPV were an “ambitious small business enterprise effectively being destroyed by the federal government,” he said.

The number of possible nominees to replace outgoing Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Kamen writes, is decreasing. And “one name seems to be popping up increasingly.” That would be the name of (pop!) Tom Steyer, the San Francisco hedge fund billionaire and political activist whose financial prospects have an uncanny symmetry with the alternative energy policies of the present administration.

Steyer is not famous but would be if his portfolio were designed around carbon resource extraction rather than leveraging government connections to gain market share for windmills and solar panels. He is early twenty-first century progressivism incarnate, a suave and shrewd example of how the self-regard and political entrepreneurism of the filthy rich is glossed over and excused so long as they pay the right people and squawk the designated left-wing clichés.

The arc of Steyer’s life bends toward aristocracy. He was born in 1957 in New York City where his lawyer father worked on Wall Street. He was educated at the Buckley School on the Upper East Side and at Phillips Exeter and at Yale. He did a tour at Morgan Stanley and another at Goldman Sachs where his boss was the future Treasury Secretary and financial deregulator Robert Rubin. His MBA is from Stanford.

Steyer began to accumulate capital when he moved to San Francisco and entered the world of leveraged buyouts, private equity, and carried interest. He founded Farallon Capital Management in 1986. The firm is huge. Steyer’s net worth is estimated to be more than $1 billion. And though he seems always to have been a run-of-the-mill liberal Democrat of the coastal elite variety, in recent years he has taken to giving a large portion of that money away to political and environmental causes. As the New York Times put it in a backslapping 2011 profile, until 2010 Steyer “was just another billionaire hedge fund manager intent on keeping a low profile.” You know—just one of those. Obama changed him.

Steyer may have started the 2008 presidential cycle as a supporter of Hillary Clinton but like so many wealthy white Democrats he soon switched his allegiance to the freshman Senator from Illinois. He has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Obama’s campaigns and rounded up millions more. And he has been rewarded for his efforts: He’s enjoyed White House access, a speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention—imagine the berserk response if David Koch had addressed the RNC—and now has within his grasp a seat in the presidential cabinet from which he would direct taxpayer dollars to companies in which he holds or has held positions. “President Obama knows that advanced energy is America’s future,” Steyer told DNC delegates in Charlotte. “And my bet, as a businessman, is that he’s exactly right.”

The bet has paid off. The media may have neglected Steyer’s DNC speech but it was nonetheless revealing. The rhetorical trick of referring to solar and wind as “advanced” energies, when Australopithecus benefited from the sun and the first windmill seems to have been built in Roman Alexandria, is a fine irony. “Businessman” meanwhile may have been a fair description of Steyer’s occupation for most of his life but it now seems too confining. “Insider” would be better; “crony” better yet.

In 2009 Steyer helped found Greener Capital, a VC firm that profits from investments in companies benefiting from the pronounced shift in energy policy under Obama and Chu. Also in 2009 Steyer’s name began to appear on the tax filings of the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), the think tank that formulated many of Obama’s advanced energy policies. Steyer’s charitable group, TomKat, has donated more than a million dollars to CAP, and he is listed as a director on its most recent form 990. This is the same think tank remember whose founder served as the head of Obama’s transition team and that provided a desk to Steven Spinner, the Obama donor and Department of Energy official who pushed for subsidies to the solar panel manufacturer Solyndra (whom his wife’s law firm represented). This is the same think tank that coordinated policy and message with loan program officials according to emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The association of Steyer and CAP has benefits. In January of this year Steyer coauthored a Wall Street Journal op-ed with John Podesta, “We Don’t Need More Foreign Oil and Gas,” that supported Obama’s decision not to approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada and argued for extending “clean-energy programs like the Production Tax Credit” and reviving “the Manufacturing Tax Credit, which helps factories retool for the clean-tech sector.” The authors failed to disclose that Steyer helps pay Podesta’s salary and that his investments would net millions if the federal government shaped public policy to his liking—millions of dollars that then would be funneled back into institutions like CAP and Democratic campaigns like Obama’s.

Reporters are like Amazonian piranhas when they detect similar positive feedback loops between rich conservatives and political and policy campaigns. But of course in this case they are far more interested in promoting Steyer’s views and congratulating him for his absolutely conventional positions on taxes and the environment. A 2008 profile of Steyer marveled at his “soak-the-rich mindset,” which author Adam Lashinsky said was just “one of the many ways” that the billionaire “embodies a different breed of investment professional than the Gucci loafer-wearing, Range Rover-driving, Bordeaux-inhaling traders who have made Greenwich, Conn., and Manhattan bubble over in recent years.” Steyer, by contrast, is “a financial whiz with a hankering for social justice,” an “athlete as well as a mathlete,” a “guy’s guy who requires guests at his annual Christmas lunch to bring a poem to read.”

One has to wonder whether Lashinsky searched Steyer’s closets and wine racks for Gucci loafers and Bordeaux and other signs of political deviance. Is it the contention of this article that Steyer is somehow unique among the Masters of the Universe because he played on Yale’s soccer team? Has Adam Lashinsky not actually ever met another person who has worked on Wall Street? Does pretentiously requiring underlings to recite Maya Angelou over  a catered turkey lunch absolve the rich and powerful from scrutiny and critique? Or is it merely the assumed possession of an insatiable “hankering for social justice” that leads credulous writers to forget that Steyer stands to gain much more money from having Obama build a clean energy economy than he would lose from a return to Clinton-era tax rates?

Such naïve cheerleading masquerading as “journalism” is a disservice to the public because it shields powerful men from investigation. After Steyer poured millions into a successful 2010 campaign to uphold California’s complicated system of carbon mandates and thus benefit his firms, the New York Times asked if he was “the anti-Koch” for whom liberals long have dreamed. Yet in between quoting various clichés from one of his speeches the Times blogger never stopped to consider that Steyer is doing precisely the thing for which liberals falsely attack the Koch brothers: influencing politics for personal gain.

When duly elected Rust Belt governors and legislators passed laws in Wisconsin and Ohio and Michigan to improve the business climates of their states the entire Western world searched for connections between their actions and the pocketbooks of Charles and David Koch. But when Steyer allocated $30 million for the campaign to support Proposition 39 on Election Day 2012, no one seemed to notice. Nor did many notice when the measure passed overwhelmingly and thus raised taxes on businesses incorporated outside California (i.e., businesses other than Farallon Capital Management and the alt-fuel companies in Silicon Valley) and used that money to fund $2.5 billion in … clean energy investments!

How appropriate then that Steyer announced in October he would step down from his position as head of Farallon so he can focus on “giving back.” As secretary of energy he would be giving taxpayer dollars back to the companies in whose future he holds lucrative stakes. He seems finally to have recognized that in America today finance capital is being displaced by political capital, and that philanthropy is a business more powerful and indeed more lucrative than running a hedge fund. He seems to have recognized that a billionaire who devotes his life to “public service” and “helping the environment” possesses the journalistic equivalent of Monopoly’s “Get of Jail Free” card. He recognized that believing in Barack Obama is a fast track to receiving gifts, and championing America’s “advanced energy economy” means never having to say you’re sorry.

Reid, who last week hosted the fifth annual National Clean Energy Summit at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, has been “pulling strings behind the scenes” for months on behalf of ENN Mojave Energy, a Nevada subsidiary of the Chinese-owned ENN Group.

After more than two years of secret negotiations beginning in 2009, lawmakers in Clark County, Nevada, unanimously agreed to sell 9,000 acres of public land to ENN for the bargain price of just $4.5 million ($500 per acre) in December 2011.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal questioned the “steep discount” ENN received for the land, which had been previously appraised for between $30 million and $39 million. The arrangement also included a bundle of tax incentives for ENN.

Reid, who reportedly helped secure a series of state and federal waivers as part of the deal, was actively involved in the negotiations with ENN. In April 2011, he led a delegation of senators to China, where the lawmakers met with senior Chinese officials and toured a number of green energy facilities, including the ENN headquarters in Langfang, China.

Upon his return, Reid called on the United States to pursue “new opportunities to collaborate on and advance clean-energy deployment here and abroad.”

Several months later, ENN chairman Wang Yusuo spoke at Reid’s clean energy summit, calling for a “more open and comprehensive” partnership between China and the United States on green energy.

ENN hired Richard Bryan, a Democrat who served with Reid in the U.S. Senate from 1989 to 2001, to represent the company in negotiations with state and federal officials. Reid’s son Rory is a partner at Bryan’s law firm.

“Senator Reid has actually gone to China, has actually had visits with the chairman of ENN, the entire global enterprise, has actually taken a look at some of their developments there,” Bryan said of Reid’s involvement. “It would seem to me that Senator Reid would exercise his persuasive powers on behalf of the state of Nevada.”

Wang’s company wants to build a 720-megawatt solar farm, research park, and thin-film solar panel manufacturing facility in southern Nevada, and has said it expects to spend between $4 billion and $6 billion on the project. That is at least half the $8 billion ENN plans to invest in green energy in the United States over the next decade.

The project is threatened, however, because NV Energy—Nevada’s largest utility provider—has said it is not in the market for renewable energy at this time, citing the higher costs of solar power and the fact that it has already exceeded the state-mandated quota for renewable sources through 2014.

Reid has responded by badmouthing NV Energy and threatening to have one of its coal-fired power plants shut down.

“NV Energy is a regulated monopoly. They control 95 percent of all the electricity that is produced in Nevada and they should go along with his,” Reid said in reference to the ENN solar project.

It is not the first time Reid has used his clout to secure favors for a Chinese green energy firm. In 2010, Reid was closely linked to lobbying efforts to secure $450 million in stimulus funding for a Chinese-owned energy company to build a wind farm in Texas, even though most of the turbines and other components would be manufactured in China.

There are indications that senior Obama administration officials were also involved in granting special consideration for the ENN project, and may have helped forge an agreement between the Chinese company and U.S. utility firm Duke Energy, which is run by a prominent donor to President Obama and the Democratic Party.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and former Commerce Secretary Gary Locke visited China in July 2009, around the time negotiations with ENN are said to have begun. Chu toured the ENN headquarters—his sole visit to a green energy company—during the trip, and praised the company’s operations. (Locke is now the U.S. ambassador to the middle kingdom.)

An ENN press release noted that this marked the point at which the company “had begun catching the attention from high-level U.S. officers.”

In January 2011, ENN and Duke Energy signed an “EcoPartnership” arrangement under which the two companies pledged to collaborate in the development of green energy technology. The two firms had cooperating on solar power projects since 2009; the new agreement expanded the arrangement to include other forms of green energy production.

The cities of Langfang and Charlotte, N.C., home to Duke Energy’s headquarters and site of the 2012 Democratic National Convention, signed a similar agreement.

Chu attended the event at which the agreements were formally announced, held the same day that President Obama hosted Chinese president Hu Jintao at a private dinner at the White House. Several months later, Chu singled out ENN for praise in testimony before two different Senate committees.

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of clean energy, enjoys a close relationship to the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. He was reportedly on Obama’s short list for Energy Secretary.

Rogers and his wife Mary Anne have personally given at least $210,000 to Democratic candidates and committees since 2008, including more than $19,000 to Obama.

The Obama administration has, in turn, showered Duke Energy with taxpayer dollars. The company received federal grants totaling $230.4 million for a number of green energy projects as part of the 2009 stimulus package.

Duke created 196.6 jobs as a result of the grants, according to Recovery.gov—a rate of about $1.2 million per job.

Shortly after President Obama was sworn into office, Duke enlisted the services of the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm founded by John Podesta, former president of the Center for American Progress and co-chairman of the Obama-Biden transition team, and his brother Tony.

Since then, Duke Energy has paid the group $860,000 to lobby to “support the passage of climate change and energy legislation” and “energy efficiency and clean energy solutions,” according to a database maintained by the Senate Office of Public Records.

The company has spent more than $26 million lobbying the federal government on energy-related issues since 2007.

Rogers has been actively involved in fundraising efforts for the Democratic National Convention, which has struggled to raise money. Rogers helped entice Democrats to hold the convention to Charlotte by offering an unprecedented $10 million line of credit backed by Duke Energy shareholders.

Another Reid clean-energy connection has also come under recent scrutiny. The Senate majority leader has close ties to Nevada real estate developer Harvey Whittemore, who has been charged with making illegal campaign contributions.

Whittemore has donated at least $195,000 to Democratic candidates and committees since 2007. His family members have given at least $50,000 to Reid during that period.

Reid helped Whittemore secure favored treatment for a $30 billion land development project in Nevada, the future site of a 960-megawatt solar thermal power plant operated by BrightSource Energy, a company whose executives have given thousands to Reid’s campaign and hosted fundraisers for the senator.

BrightSource received $1.4 billion in taxpayer-guaranteed loans as part of President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which Reid supported.

The wind production tax credit won’t be permanent, as even the American Wind Energy Association has come out in support of a credit that will phase out over time as the cost of producing electricity from wind turbines becomes more and more competitive, Chu said.

The wind energy investment tax credits have been opposed by congressional Republicans who don’t consider it a wise use of federal tax dollars to help support wind generation, which is more expensive per unit of energy to produce than traditional electricity generation sources like coal and natural gas.

Chu said continuing the tax credit – set to expire at the end of this year – was important to help send a signal that the U.S. supports clean energy and the manufacturing jobs linked with it.

Former GSA administrator Martha Johnson said the Chevy Volt would save millions in a May 2011 speech on the government purchase of electric vehicles, the Washington Examiner reports:

Before GSA administrator Martha Johnson resigned in disgrace, she proudly oversaw the purchase of over 100 electric vehicles that would be delivered to Government agencies.

In this 2011 video filmed by the GSA, Johnson proudly delivers a set of keys to a brand new Chevy Volt to Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Johnson resigned earlier this month, after reports of lavish spending at a Las Vegas conference for the GSA. In March, GM halted production of the Volt for a period of five weeks, due to lagging sales despite large subsidies and consumer incentives.

Video transcript:

VOICE OVER: U.S. General Services Administration launched the first ever government-elected vehicle program. This initial federal fleet purchase of electric cars will support the new and growing EV market.

MARTHA JOHNSON: This is the first of many sets of keys that will be delivered to the Department of Energy and other agencies that will help save millions of dollars and set a course for a sustainable federal fleet.

VOICE OVER: At the pilot program launch, GSA administrator Martha Johnson handed the first set of keys to a Chevy Volt to Energy Sec. Steven Chu.

SEC. STEVEN CHU: Together we can help meet President Obama’s bold but achievable vehicle goals. We can become the first country to put one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

Philips raised eyebrows when it debuted the winning bulb with a $50 price tag. That is far beyond the $22 cost recommended by the department, which is now working with utility companies to cut back on the upfront cost through rebates.

Department documents, however, cast doubt on whether the expensive LED bulb was even worthy of the prize.

Contest rules outlined by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act required the winning L Prize bulb to shine at 900 lumens. A department report on 200 bulbs tested at two different facilities showed that nearly 70 bulbs failed to meet that standard, including more than 60 percent of the bulbs tested at one of the labs.

“The integrating sphere test from the [lab name redacted] shows that only 5 of 100 samples tested were below 900 lumens, but the [lab name redacted] integrating sphere testing shows 38 samples that were over 900lm and 62 were under,” the report reads.

Despite Philips’ poor showing at the DOE lab tests, the department passed the bulb after receiving reassurance from the Dutch company.

“Philips data shows all tested lamps (2000) were above 900 lumens. Philips test and modeling data indicate…this criterion will be met in the production lamp,” the report continued.

A department spokeswoman insisted that the bulbs met the requirements.

“The minimum output measured in this sample of 200 lamps was 873 lumens and the maximum was 967 lumens, a range consistent with normal manufacturing tolerances,” the spokeswoman said. “The average light output of the 200 samples tested was 910 lumens.”

One lighting expert, however, said the average is not a good indicator of LED performance.

“You have to be very careful in choosing LEDs because there is difficulty in uniformity,” the expert said. “Having that many bulbs fail is suspect, especially if you plan on taking these bulbs to the market.”

Philips spokeswoman Silvie Casanova said the L Prize bulb that will hit store shelves later this spring fulfills every L Prize requirement.

“I’m sure that in the test run, there might have been some that had some performance issues, but I’m sure the department is looking at a baseline of the bulbs overall performance,” she said. “It does meet the requirements; we’re going through Energy Star testing right now” that will verify the company data.

Contest rules mandated that an entrant that failed to meet basic standards would be “terminated” and forced to return to square one of the competition.

There is no indication that Philips’ entry was disqualified, however.

Scientists who developed rival bulbs were outraged when they heard that the department allowed Philips to move forward.

“We treated the standards as Gospel: you had to have 900 lumens, you had to have the right color, the right temperature, the right (light distribution),” said one engineer who worked on the Lighting Sciences Group’s L Prize design.

“We went through revision after revision because if you change the (brightness), the color could be wrong and we’d start over. If we had known we could have fudged the (brightness) then everything else becomes easy,” the engineer said.

In 2009, when other lighting companies were still at the design phase of the process, Philips submitted a 2,000-bulb sample to the department. The quick submission intimidated many others vying for the L Prize, according to multiple industry insiders.

“Not once did the DOE ever let anyone know about the testing results; there was no transparency,” another lighting expert said. “If they had made it known in 2010 that Philips didn’t pass the test, then other competitors would have proceeded forward. The inference was that they passed.”

The department closed the competition and awarded Philips the $10 million prize in August 2011.

The brightness test was not the only requirement that Philips may not have reached. Department notes also indicate that reviewers changed the light distribution criteria to Philips’ favor.

“Testing and modeling of prototype production lamps show the luminous intensity distribution falling below 10 percent from the mean near 150 degrees,” the report said. “However, the TSC finds the use of the 0-135 degree zone acceptable … this is different than the 0-150 zone specified.”

“The department cannot just change the rules on how they are going to test, especially if they don’t tell other competitors about the rule change,” said a second lighting insider. “Only Philips benefitted from the criteria change.”

The contest has been marred by several controversies since it opened in 2008.

A House Appropriations Committee report issued in June slammed the department for announcing the $10 million prize without prior approval from Congress.

“The Committee strongly opposes the Department announcing funding opportunities when those funds have not yet been made available by Congress,” the report said. “In the case of the L Prize, the Department risks damaging its credibility.”

The warning was enough to worry higher-ups at Philips, which spent nearly $1.8 million lobbying Congress to fund the program.

The bulb’s $50 price tag also produced sticker shock among industry insiders. It is about double the cost of existing LED bulbs and about fifty times higher than the 60-watt incandescent bulb it was designed to replace.

“I’m impressed with the technology, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’s not,” the former LSG engineer said. “But we were going for a $22 bulb, forget rebates, and Philips missed it by a mile.”

The L Prize winner is expected to last 25,000 hours and save consumers $160 over the lifetime of the bulb compared to 60-watt incandescent bulbs, which were outlawed by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA).

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said the competition helped move LED technology forward by providing companies with incentives to make energy efficient bulbs.

“The idea of that light bulb contest was to provide for a goal going further down to get a light bulb that eventually, Americans can afford,” he told Congress in March.

The former LSG executive is not convinced.

“Letting (the bulb) come out that expensive, I think it set the market back … people are looking for a return on investment and this just tells them they can’t afford any LED bulbs,” he said. “I can’t blame the U.S. citizens for saying, ‘my God, the government is wasting our money.’”

In March, DOE opened the second round of the L Prize competition, which will aim to replace the existing halogen floodlight.

Jordan listed nine people with ties to the Obama administration and financial stakes in Energy Department loan recipients, asking Chu if any had influenced the Energy Department’s decision to award the loans.

For example, there is Steve Spinner, a loan program officer at the Energy Department and a former bundler for the Obama campaign. Spinner’s wife’s law firm represents Solyndra, the bankrupt solar company, which received $535 million in taxpayer-backed Energy Department loans.

“My understanding is there were 27 companies in the 1705 loan program, eight of which had connections to the White House,” Jordan said. “Do you see a pattern or concern there?”

Chu said the political connections had no influence on his decision to award the loans. He said neither they nor the White House lobbied him for the loan guarantees.

Chu testified Tuesday on the Department of Energy loan program, which was in charge of awarding billions of dollars in stimulus money as part of the Obama administration’s green jobs initiative.

At the Oversight Committee hearing, held to address the Energy Department’s green energy loan program, Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) asked Chu how he would grade his performance on reducing gas prices. Chu said “higher than (A-minus),” citing the department’s aggressive work to develop alternatives to petroleum-based fuel, such as natural gas and electric.

At a previous hearing in March, Chu said he would give himself an A-minus grade for his performance so far as Energy Secretary.

However, Republican members of the committee disputed Chu’s claims.

“The policy this admin has put in place has actually increased the cost of fuel of pump,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R., N.C.). “The anger that my constituents have at the cost at the pumps is real.”

Oversight Committee Republicans are expected to grill Chu today over the Department of Energy’s loan program, specifically more than $1 billion in loans to several solar companies and the agency’s weatherization program.

Transcript of the exchange:

ISSA: Now, let me just ask one basic question, in an earlier hearing, you gave yourself an A-minus. In weatherization, do you give yourself an A-minus?

CHU: Actually, I do.

ISSA: In controlling the cost of gasoline at the pump, do you give yourself an A-minus?

CHU: Well, the tools we have at our disposal are limited, but I would say, I would give myself a little higher in that since I became secretary of Energy, I’ve been doing everything I can to get long-term solutions.

ABC News reports:

In order to receive the loan money, First Solar had to provide evidence that each project would employ new and innovative technologies to generate energy. Republican investigators said Friday the records they reviewed raised doubts about whether the solar facilities actually do that. Among the documents they cite is an email from a top technical expert inside the department, written less than six weeks before the loans to First Solar were approved, in which he argues that one of the supposed advances — use of something called a “single axis tracker” — was actually not all that new.

“Be clear this is not an innovation,” wrote Dong K. Kim, the director of the loan program’s technical division. “The record will show we did not grade this as an innovation.”

Further, Kim writes that “someone keeps changing” internal documents to hold out the tracking technology as innovative. And he warns that “whoever continues to make this change needs to understand that Technical does not support [identifying the trackers] as an innovative component.”

A Government Accountability Office report issued last week found the Energy Department loan program skipped steps in its review process when evaluating loans, while in some cases it was impossible to determine if the review steps were even completed.

Jose Villarreal, a board member of the Center for American Progress (CAP)—a left-wing think tank closely tied to the administration that has argued strenuously for green energy loans—sits on the board of First Solar.

Republicans are expected to grill Energy Secretary Steven Chu tomorrow over the First Solar loan at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The bulb, which is slated to replace the 60-watt incandescent light bulb lawmakers banned in 2007, costs $50, well above the $1 consumers are used to spending on traditional bulbs and double the price of many existing LED lights.

The department has gone from judge to partner to help Philips sell the product. It is now trying to coax utility companies to grant discounts and rebates to customers in order to create demand for the light bulb.

“We are actively working with (utilities) to hammer out deals to introduce the product to their region,” said an official familiar with the L-Prize. “DOE’s mission is energy savings and in order to get that there needs to be widespread market adoption.”

Thirty-one utility companies have partnered with the department and Philips to grant rebates to customers who purchase bulbs, the highest being a $25 rebate from Efficiency Vermont.

Philips Lighting USA has splashed references to the L-Prize bulb—a name assigned to the product by the federal government—and is doing its best to market the product to businesses before launching residential sales next month.

“I know everyone is looking at the $50 price tag, but Philips has been actively working to get those rebates,” company spokeswoman Silvie Casanova said. “The price reflects that it’s harder to make this bulb than existing 60 watt LEDs.”

That technology is also constructed at more expensive plants in Wisconsin and San Jose, rather than the Chinese factories that churn out the company’s existing line of energy efficient bulbs.

Other officials familiar with the project told the Washington Free Beacon that there is little the department or Philips can do to lower the price in the short-term except wait for consumers to adapt the new bulb, as traditional incandescents are phased out.

“The point of the award is to help reduce the cost of this domestically produced technology over time—just like the price of plasma TVs has fallen from $25,000 in 1998 to $500 today,” said Jen Stutsman, spokeswoman for the Energy Department.

The steep price tag is not the competition’s first brush with controversy.

A House Appropriations Committee report issued in June slammed the department for announcing the $10 million prize without prior approval from Congress.

“The Committee strongly opposes the Department announcing funding opportunities when those funds have not yet been made available by Congress,” the report reads. “In the case of the L Prize, the Department risks damaging its credibility.”

The warning was enough to worry higher-ups at Philips, which spent nearly $1.8 million lobbying Congress to fund the program.

The committee granted the award money to spare the department embarrassment, but changed its rules to prohibit “announcements in advance of appropriations.”

Philips received about $5.6 million from the federal stimulus to advance its LED lighting technology. It spent nearly as much—$4.5 million since 2008—lobbying Congress and the Obama administration for bills friendly to lighting appropriations.

Casanova refused to “talk to the lobbying spending,” but emphasized that the bulb maker did not use any stimulus dollars for researching the bulb.

“We didn’t get any money to develop this bulb,” she said.

Department officials are backing away from the contest’s initial call to draft an affordable bulb that could come to market at $22 and drop to $8 per bulb by its third year.

“The idea of that light bulb contest was to provide for a goal going further down to get a light bulb that eventually, Americans can afford,” Secretary of Energy Steven Chu told Congress on Tuesday.

Energy officials remain optimistic about the expensive competition and its initial results.

Department lab tests found that the bulbs will last up to 25,000 hours, which would save consumers about $160 over the lifetime of the bulb, according to department estimates.

The department plans to continue with the program, announcing a second competition in March.