Energy Fund Pays General Electric To Buy GE
General Electric gets state grant to buy GE-made solar panels
The PR flack was quoted as saying:“It’s a good demonstration project for the technology,” O’Toole said.
Asked why a large, profitable corporation like GE would need financial help from the state, O’Toole said one reason “is to show you have to invest in new technologies. Companies cannot do it alone.”
HartfordBusiness.comIn other GE news, spokesmen did comment on whether PR spin could be harnessed as an inexhaustible and eternal source of power.
GE's 2006 revenues were $168,307,000,000
Among cities its size Hartford's child poverty rate is the second highest in the country. In greater Hartford, 100,000 people receive food from food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters, and 40,000 of them are children.
The grant to GE is funded by an electric bill surcharge, levied on every household in the state.
The New York Fed comments on poverty in Bridgeport.
The Clean Energy Fund has some problems:
For example, in 2004 a top Clean Energy Fund official filed a whistleblower complaint with the attorney general's office alleging that a $500,000 loan was approved for a biomass project that involved a CI board member who has since resigned his post. CI conducted its own internal investigation into the matter, but has since refused to share its results with legislators or the public. That is unacceptable, and it casts doubt on CI's ability to review and approve Clean Energy Fund projects in a manner consistent with legislative intent and – more importantly – the proper investment of the ratepayer's money.
Then there was former state Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Peter Ellef, who – as a co-chief of staff for former Gov. Rowland – tried to steer a Massachusetts fuel cell company to Connecticut with the help of CI, but only if that company paid an inflated rent to a friend of Gov. Rowland's, and paid that friend $200,000 in cash (CI is an associated agency of the DECD.) Ellef and that friend of Rowland – William Tomasso – are now serving time in federal prison for that and other schemes to defraud the state. Again, a potentially valuable initiative was derailed due to politics infecting the selection and oversight of a Clean Energy Fund project.
Norwalk Democrats
Since CCEF’s inception in 2000, the clean energy fund approved 206 projects that promised to produce 71.5 megawatts of clean energy; so far, those projects have produced 2 megawatts of energy. Source
GE: Keeping the Con in Connecticut
