How the Big Green Grift Works at the Department of Energy, Using Money Borrowed from Our Descendants

Teri L. Donaldson, the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Energy just issued a stunning interim report regarding the performance of the Department’s Energy Loan Programs Office (LPO) under the Biden Adminstration. The LPO administers more than $385 billion in new loan authority granted under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and related legislation that enable the BIg Green Grift.

The IG report speaks for itself and may be found here but here are some of the most interesting aspects (emphasis added):

The Federal Government prohibits conflicts of interest to safeguard the taxpayers against self- dealing, collusion, and fraud by Government officials and Government contractors. In the private sector, each party has a “baked in” economic incentive to watch, track, and account for its own dollars. That economic incentive does not exist in the public sector, where Federal dollars are more likely to be treated as “monopoly money.” For this reason, implementing and overseeing robust conflict of interest protections is a critical role for Federal officials.

The Department of Energy Loan Programs Office (LPO) is administering more than $385 billion in new loan authority without ensuring a regulatory and contractually compliant and effective system to manage organizational conflicts of interest. This poses a significant risk of fraud, waste, and abuse. Congress issued this unprecedented volume of loan authority in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and related legislation. The projects funded with this authority, which involve innovations in clean energy, advanced transportation, and tribal energy are inherently risky in part because these projects may have struggled to secure funding from traditional sources such as commercial banks and private equity investors…

The LPO contracts with a prime contractor, Archetype II, LLC, (Archetype) which also contracts with subcontractors to provide the LPO reports analyzing issues such as project eligibility, assessment of project cost, market potential, and technical/engineering issues…

All LPO contracts related to administration of the loan authority, including contracts with third-party experts, include a clause: (1) requiring disclosure of apparent or actual conflicts of interest; and (2) imposing a continuing obligation to disclose any circumstances that may create an actual or apparent conflict of interest…

Notwithstanding these regulatory and contractual provisions, an ongoing OIG audit has found that the LPO is not managing organizational conflicts of interest in compliance with regulations or ensuring that Archetype and its subcontractors are implementing effective plans to manage conflicts of interest. Although the audit is not complete, we are issuing this memorandum now because of the risks associated with closing an additional $22 billion in loans and loan guarantees…

By failing to track the parties involved in these transactions, as well as the disclosures and waiver requests, the LPO has functionally abandoned any responsibility for identifying, evaluating, avoiding, neutralizing, or mitigating conflicts of interest…

The OIG will issue a full report with formal recommendations at the conclusion of our fieldwork. Therefore, this memorandum does not represent the final position of the OIG. However, considering the issues found to date, we identified several corrective actions that the Director of the LPO should take immediately:

1. Put into abeyance all loan and loan guarantee packages until the LPO can ensure that contracting officers and the contracting officers’ representatives are complying with conflicts of interest regulations and enforcing conflict of interest contractual obligations.

2. Ensure that contracting officers working on LPO loans and loan guarantees either: (1) establish a centralized tracking mechanism that tracks both (a) contractors for all projects, and also (b) conflict of interest disclosures or waivers; or (2) otherwise implement measures necessary to comply with conflicts of interest regulations and contract provisions.

3. Consider enhancing practices for managing conflicts of interest for contractors.

4. Ensure that the contracting officer and the contracting officer’s representative for Archetype review Archetype’s plan to ensure all aspects are being implemented as required.

There is much more to the report, including responses from the Department and responses to those responses, but readers will get the point. The Biden gang is trying to push as much grift out the door as it can and as fast as possible now, of course. That it is doing it incompetently is no surprise, nor is the fact there is little attention to conflicts. Nonetheless, this interim report provides an important peek inside the Big Green Grift and how it operates using money borrowed from descendants down to 10th generation or so.

#BigGreenGrift #DOE #IRA #LoanGuarantees #Biden

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