Department Of Energy Offers $245 Million Conditional Loan Guarantee To Red River Environmental Products
December 23, 2009 by admin
(DOE, December 9, 2009) Washington, DC – Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced the offer of a $245 million conditional loan guarantee to Red River Environmental Products, LLC to build an activated carbon (AC) manufacturing facility near Coushatta, Red River Parish, Louisiana. The company expects to create 500 jobs during construction and 70 jobs once the plant is fully operational. Activated carbon is the leading technology for reducing mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants and has been adopted by virtually all coal-fired boilers required to reduce mercury emissions. AC can reduce a coal-fired power plant’s mercury emissions by up to 90 percent by absorbing vaporized mercury contained in the flue gas and collecting it in the plant’s particulate collection device.
“By reducing pollution from power plants, we can create good new jobs and clean up the air we breathe and water we drink,” said Secretary Chu. “We are at the beginning of a new Industrial Revolution in energy technologies, and America must seize this opportunity to lead the world in making these important advances.”
Added Senator Mary Landrieu: “The Department of Energy recognizing Red River Environmental Products is a testament to the cutting-edge technology being pioneered by Louisiana innovators. The activated carbon manufactured at this plant will improve our environment and help to reduce the levels of mercury in seafood by cleaning emissions from coal power plants — a known source of these contaminants. This company is making a vital product needed throughout the country, and they’re doing it more efficiently than virtually anyone else.”
Demand for activated carbon for mercury emissions control has grown significantly in the past two years and is expected to continue to outstrip available supplies due to regulatory initiatives. Nearly 20 states have issued mercury emissions regulations.
At full capacity, the plant will produce 150 million pounds per year of powdered AC which will remove 30,000 pounds of mercury from the flue gas of approximately 160 coal-fired power plants. Coal-fired power plants generate about one-half of the electricity in the U.S. and emit a substantial proportion of industrial mercury emissions.
The plant will use state-of-the-art air pollution control equipment to reduce its own emissions of volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide and will also use AC to sequester 80 percent of the plant’s mercury emissions. The plant’s design will also save 26 million gallons of water per year compared to conventional AC plant designs. Waste heat will generate the plant’s electrical power and the excess electricity will be sold to the local utility—enough to power 13,000 homes.
This is the fourth conditional commitment for loan guarantees made by the Obama Administration. The first recipient of a loan guarantee for an innovative technology energy project was Solyndra, Inc., a manufacturer of cylindrical solar photovoltaic panels. Two other conditional commitments have been made to Nordic Windpower, USA, a maker of two-blade, one megawatt wind turbines, and Beacon Power, an energy storage company.
Red River Environmental Products applied under the 2008 Loan Guarantee Program solicitation for “Projects that Employ Innovative Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, and Advanced Transmission and Distributed Technologies.” For more information on this program, please visit the Loan Guarantee Program Office.
Please re-post)
Less than 20 car companies applied for $25 BILLION DOLLARS in taxpayer money managed by a certain smug group of people at DOE in order to get loans to make green cars for Americans. This was not all of DOE that did bad things, just a private cadre of men.
There was enough money to help every single one of the car companies that applied. The administrators applied their interpretations of the law in order to benefit the large lobby group-related firms and avoided every one of the“unconnected”independent American companies.
The amount of lobby and influence money spent is in direct ratio to the amount of money awarded.
The smaller companies, due to lower overhead, could have dramatically more productive results with the money than the large burdened companies yet the money was given out based on political career advantages for the administrators rather technology advantages for America.
All of the people that reviewed the applications had political and financial connections to GM, Ford, Chrysler and the large Detroit recipients.
Each of those smaller American companies had technology and resources that presented a strong economic threat, if they got the loans, to the large politically connected companies that did receive funds.
The Section 136 law was written to provide first-come-first serve funding but when the small companies got their applications in first while the big ones arrogantly felt that they did not even need to apply because it was already pre-staged for them, the ATVM officials changed the rules in order to remove the first-come-first-serve standard of the law in order to cut out the smaller independents.
Some of the companies that have gotten money have backed out of making the electric cars they said they would make. But they still get to keep the money.
The Section 136 Law was created by the lobbyists for GM, Ford & Chrysler when they saw that they were about to go bankrupt and wanted to tap into additional taxpayer dollars by claiming the money was going to be used for electric cars in order to win rapid support for Section 136 by tugging at heartstrings. In retrospect, the money mostly went to gasoline car projects. Multiple public hearings have already shown the sister loan guarantee program to have been a failed program via intentional delays, the head was fired and replaced & massive complaints have been filed by many.
Some of the companies that got the money have already wasted more money than other companies applied for as their total request.
Some of the companies that got taxpayer loan money are not even American companies and/or are doing their manufacturing offshore with non-American employees.
Those who got the money had to fill out little, or no, paperwork, went through little, or no, review and were connected to the DOE people who gave them the money. Those who they wanted to keep out were forced to jump through more hoops, were slow-tracked in review and had no connections.
The decision about who would get money was made in 2008 by a private group who then pretended there was a lengthy review throughout 2009 but in fact, the money was pre-wired for a select few.
All of the things that the rejected small companies (who did not pay lobby fees) were rejected for, were the same things that the insider big companies were doing.