Backers urged Obama not to visit, talk up solar start-up

The memo was among several copies of e-mails released yesterday by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating a government loan to the now-shuttered company.

Obama’s Energy Department had provided Solyndra with a $535 million government-backed loan in 2009 and wanted to highlight the investment to show taxpayers how their stimulus dollars had been put to work. Westly said that if Obama proceeded with the visit, he should be careful about touting the company’s future: “If it’s too late to change/postpone the meeting, the president should be careful about unrealistic/optimistic forecasts that could haunt him in the next 18 months if Solyndra hits the wall, files for bankruptcy, etc.’’

Westly’s concern, which proved to be prescient, was that the company had been cautioned the previous month by its outside auditors that it was burning through cash rapidly and that its future as a “going concern’’ was in doubt. The solar-panel manufacturer closed its doors Aug. 31, then filed for bankruptcy protection and laid off 1,100 workers. Its closure has left taxpayers obligated to repay the loan.

But Obama did visit Solyndra in May 2010, touting it in a national news conference as an “engine of economic growth’’ and a model of his administration’s $80 billion stimulus-funded investment in clean-energy technologies and companies.

What was once a showcase of the Obama administration’s clean-energy initiative is now a political scandal for the White House. Federal investigators have launched a criminal probe into whether the company misled the government and engaged in accounting fraud.

Last year, there were others besides Westly who raised alarms about Obama visiting Solyndra, according to the released e-mails.

One official at the Office of Management and Budget wrote to a White House staffer: “I am increasingly worried that this visit could prove embarrassing to the administration in the not too distant future, given 1) what we just heard today from DOE that Solyndra is delaying their IPO at least until the end of the year, and 2) what the auditors said about Solyndra making it through the year absent new financing.’’

But inside the Energy Department, which had pushed to give Solyndra the government-backed loan, officials counseled the White House not to worry.

Yesterday, Obama said he does not regret backing the loan guarantee, saying officials always knew a clean energy loan program would not back winners 100 percent of the time. “There are going to be some failures, and Solyndra’s an example,’’ Obama said in an ABC News interview.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.