After a last-minute cancellation last week of a markup of legislation that would phase out the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will take up the bill today and consider provisions aimed at USEC’s American Centrifuge Plant. The “No More Solyndras Act” came as the result of the panel’s investigation into a loan guarantee granted to the now-bankrupt solar panel company. But Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a staunch opponent of federal assistance for USEC, has developed three amendments aimed specifically at nuclear projects like ACP. The lawmaker is trying to ensure Republicans hold those projects to the same standards as “so-called failures like Solyndra,” Markey spokeswoman Giselle Barry said.
One amendment would not allow loan guarantees to a company that has lost more than $535 million in the last year. Another “Buy American” provision would bar loan guarantees if less than 75 percent of the project’s components were not manufactured in the United States. And a third would not allow a loan guarantee to a company that “has received a letter from a stock exchange warning that it will be delisted from the stock exchange because it is trading at too low a price to comply with the exchange’s listing standards,” until the stock price recovers. USEC has been pursuing a $2 billion loan guarantee since 2009, while in the meantime the company has experienced significant losses and warnings that it may be de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange.
Markey has found a number of Republican allies in the past for his efforts to strike government funding for the American Centrifuge project. One such ally, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), said this week that Markey’s amendments were not necessary. “USEC is receiving assistance in the form of depleted uranium tails, and direct payments out of DOE’s Nuclear Non Proliferation Account. To the extent that USEC wanted to apply for a loan guarantee, ‘No More Solyndras’ ends the program, so a USEC-specific amendment is unnecessary,” Burgess said in a written statement.
