Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm gifted her home state of Michigan a whopping sum of $14 billion to develop green energy projects just before leaving the White House. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office announced on Thursday that a total of $22.9 billion in loan guarantees was taken to be distributed to 12 states for such projects.
The $14 billion taken by Granholm was given to two companies to which she reportedly has ties, DTE Energy and Consumers Energy, for projects just in Michigan. An additional $1.3 billion loan was given to Michigan’s Potash Company to help “fund a sustainable fertilizer plant.”
The gift Granholm gave the companies followed their own financial support given to her for her campaign. According to the Free Beacon, “DTE Energy’s political action committee contributed more than $34,000 to Granholm’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign, according to state records. Then-DTE Energy CEO Stephen Ewing, whom Granholm appointed to serve on the state’s Early Childhood Investment Corporation Executive Committee, personally donated another $3,400 to Granholm’s campaign in 2004. Consumers Energy’s political action committee gave Granholm’s gubernatorial campaign $25,000 in that same timespan, additional data show. And Brandon Hofmeister, the company’s current senior vice president of strategy, sustainability, and external affairs, served as Granholm’s energy and climate policy adviser and deputy legal counsel when she was governor.”
The billions of dollars being handed out has raised eyebrows in the direction of the Loan Programs Office, which was reactivated under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act in which it received tens of billions of dollars in lending authority. Since then, the program has reportedly given $107.4 billion in “green loans” serving the Biden administration’s climate agenda.
The Free Beacon reports, “Biden administration officials have continued to dole out lucrative loans even after the Department of Energy’s inspector general issued a report in December calling on the Department of Energy to suspend the program. The watchdog warned that agency officials are not complying with conflict-of-interest rules and that the program carries a ‘significant risk of fraud.’”
Despite this warning from the inspector general, Granholm oversaw the billions of dollars in loans anyway in her final days in the administration.
ReCall the money and if the green entities that received funds fail to return them tax them at 90% until it is paid back.