Despite Solyndra, Energy Department giving out loans faster than before

John Hanlon | September 17, 2011 11:48 PM

As the Solyndra scandal continues to dominate headlines, it looks like the Energy Department is continuing its program of giving out loans to clean-technology companies. However, as the

Washington Post recently reported, payments to energy companies are now taking place at a FASTER rate than they were before.

From the Post:

The Energy Department, under fire over its management of a program that offers loan guarantees to clean-technology companies, has been finalizing additional multimillion-dollar loan guarantees in the program at a rate of more than one a week since the beginning of August. It now has just two weeks left to commit the program’s remaining $9.3 billion....

Since the start of August, the Department of Energy has closed seven loan guarantees, at a rate of more than one a week — after approving just 11 in the previous 26 months of the program.

So it looks like the Energy Department is not only moving forward with the program. It's giving out loans faster than it was before so that it can spend more of the BILLIONS of dollars that are remaining.

One hopes that the department is now giving more scrutiny to companies than it was before but with the deadline looming, I'm not optimistic.