Abound Solar Inc., a U.S. solar manufacturer that was awarded a $400 million U.S. loan guarantee, will close its doors and file for bankruptcy because its panels were too expensive to compete with Chinese products.
Abound borrowed about $70 million against the guarantee, the Loveland, Colorado-based company said today in a statement. It plans to file for bankruptcy protection in Colorado next week.
The failure will follow that of Solyndra LLC, which shut down in August after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the same U.S. Energy Department program. Abound stopped production in February to focus on reducing costs after a global oversupply and increasing competition from China drove down the price of solar panels by half last year.
“Aggressive pricing actions from Chinese solar-panel companies have made it very difficult for an early stage startup company like Abound to scale in current market conditions,” the company said in the statement.
U.S. taxpayers may lose $40 million to $60 million on the loan after Abound’s assets are sold and the bankruptcy proceeding closes, Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman, said in a statement today.
“When the floor fell out on the price of solar panels, Abound’s product was no longer cost competitive,” LaVera said.
“This is not surprising at all,” Anthony Kim, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in New York, said today in an interview. “They were trying to sell to a competitive, over- supplied market with limited production. That keeps costs high.”
Cliff Stearns, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight panel that has held several hearings and collected thousands of administration e-mails relating to Solyndra’s guarantee, said he didn’t think Abound’s closure warranted its own investigation.
“We know why they went bankrupt. We warned them they would go bankrupt,” Stearns, a Florida Republican, told reporters today. “The larger question is why the administration was pursuing a green-energy policy in which companies are going bankrupt and wasting taxpayer money.”
http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...-close-as-early-as-today-greentech-media-says
Thank Obama for pissing away taxpayer dollars.
Abound borrowed about $70 million against the guarantee, the Loveland, Colorado-based company said today in a statement. It plans to file for bankruptcy protection in Colorado next week.
The failure will follow that of Solyndra LLC, which shut down in August after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the same U.S. Energy Department program. Abound stopped production in February to focus on reducing costs after a global oversupply and increasing competition from China drove down the price of solar panels by half last year.
“Aggressive pricing actions from Chinese solar-panel companies have made it very difficult for an early stage startup company like Abound to scale in current market conditions,” the company said in the statement.
U.S. taxpayers may lose $40 million to $60 million on the loan after Abound’s assets are sold and the bankruptcy proceeding closes, Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman, said in a statement today.
“When the floor fell out on the price of solar panels, Abound’s product was no longer cost competitive,” LaVera said.
“This is not surprising at all,” Anthony Kim, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in New York, said today in an interview. “They were trying to sell to a competitive, over- supplied market with limited production. That keeps costs high.”
Cliff Stearns, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight panel that has held several hearings and collected thousands of administration e-mails relating to Solyndra’s guarantee, said he didn’t think Abound’s closure warranted its own investigation.
“We know why they went bankrupt. We warned them they would go bankrupt,” Stearns, a Florida Republican, told reporters today. “The larger question is why the administration was pursuing a green-energy policy in which companies are going bankrupt and wasting taxpayer money.”
http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...-close-as-early-as-today-greentech-media-says
Thank Obama for pissing away taxpayer dollars.
