In Part I, we looked at the supporters, the detractors, the problems of targets, the Projection Problem, optimistic timelines — and the question of whether targets were “juiced.» This brings us to the problem of financing, which we’ll continue with in Part II of this special report.

The Smoking Gun: The Failed Loan Guarantee Program for Cellulosics

No one ever, ever thought that cellulosic fuels would get off the ground without a loan guarantee program. First-of-kind technologies are simply too risky for conventional project finance lenders and costs — and credit-card interest rates made the projects not economically viable.

So, DOE-backed projects — into which DOE would have extraordinary oversight and insight — weresupposed to have access to DOE-backed loan guarantees for their first commercial projects — which theoretically would allow them to zero out the project risk to the lender and allow them to tap conventional project finance at conventional interest rates — something like 4-7 percent. After the first commercial, the technology risk would be eliminated, and the companies could tap conventional project finance on their own — so went the theory.

Did DOE get a start on the program? Sure, In fact, it was not authorized under the 2007 EISA Act, one was originally established under the 2005 Energy Policy Act. By 2007, Ethanol Producer was reporting, “The DOE is also developing a loan guarantee program for cellulosic projects as authorized in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.”

As of today, the DOE has only two loan guarantees in its portfolio for this 1703 program — both for nuclear energy.

What Happened?

Bottom line, of the 11 projects we outlined, only one received one of those DOE loan guarantees, and that one was not finalized until September 2011 — $132.4M for the Abengoa Bioenergy project.  The INEOS New Planet Energy project and Range Fuels (ironically) received USDA loan guarantees. BlueFire has a conditional USDA loan guarantee commitment, but no lender of record yet. The rest of them had to find wealthy corporate backers.

Numerous projects attempted to attract DOE loan guarantees, and no dice.

A house oversight committee found that:

“DOE invested a disproportionate amount of its funds into solar technology leaving taxpayers vulnerable by overemphasizing a single technology. 16 of the 27 1705-backed projects employed solar technology – that represented 80 percent of DOE’s funds.”

And noted that:

“DOE has engaged in a disturbing pattern of suspending the approval of a credible project that adheres to all stated standards, only to later approve massive funding for a project proven to be nowhere nearly as far along in the process as DOE purported. DOE’s favoritism significantly harmed numerous companies that had relied on the promise of 1705 financing. The perception is that DOE actively misleads applicants about the status of their loan application, thereby encouraging these firms to misallocate capital, which has led to financial harm.”

Bottom line, financing woes have been the biggest cause of delay — primarily, the government’s inability to construct the loan guarantee program it knew would be needed for first commercials.

The Abengoa project that received funding was, in fact, the lowest-rated project in the DOE’s entire technology loan portfolio — receiving a CCC rating, which is rated as a “highly-speculative investment”. In fact., Abengoa was exposed to criticism in the House Oversight Report because of the Abengoa Bioenergy loan:

A single Spanish firm, Abengoa, received an aggregate $2.45 billion in loans and loan guarantees plus $818 million in Treasury cash grants.54 This reveals excessive risk and subsidies provided to a single firm via multiple subsidiaries. Abengoa has a credit rating of BB, which is considered Junk, thus making this concentration of investment in one company speculative and highly questionable. Exemplifying the risk DOE took in the case of Abengoa, the company managed to obtain a DOE loan commitment for the lowest rated project across the entire DOE Junk portfolio; Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas received an extraordinarily low CCC rating and yet the DOE approved a direct loan to the project.

In a 2011 independent review of loan guarantees ordered by the White House, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Herbert Allison, found: «A lack of clarity in the lines of authority within the loan program office; A lack of clear guidance regarding DOE’s standard of “reasonable prospect of repayment;” and “A lack of clarity with regard to DOE’s goals and tradeoffs with respect to financial goals versus policy goals”

The Crisis of Innovative Technology Financing

The problem of the Loan Guarantee program is that it simultaneously required a “reasonable prospect of repayment” while at the same time focusing, in the language of the Energy Policy Act: The Secretary may only make loan guarantees under §1703 for projects that employ “new or significantly improved technologies.” DOE’s implementing regulation defines this as an energy technology “that is not a Commercial Technology, and that has either (1) Only recently been developed, discovered, or learned; or (2) Involves or constitutes one or more meaningful and important improvements in productivity and value, in comparison to Commercial Technologies in use in the United States…”