On Wednesday the Department of Energy began financing solar power installation research with a $2 million award to Solar Mosaic. The solar energy research company has former Obama “green jobs” czar Van Jones listed as an advisor. It also employed Rebuild the Dream, Jones’ firm, to do its public relations work.
The DOE’s grant money will be distributed to nine companies in four states. Solar Mosaic received the most money, four times the amount of most other grants.
Jones resigned his post in the Obama administration three years ago amid controversy stemming from his past remarks.
Before working in the Obama White House, Jones signed a petition alleging officials in the George W. Bush administration “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”
Jones later made crude remarks about Republicans in a public speech and expressed support for Mumia-Abu Jamal, a death row inmate convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer.
It’s unclear whether the Department of Energy knew of Jones’ position at Solar Mosaic. Agency spokeswoman Jen Strutsman told The Daily Caller that grantmaking was “decided solely on the merits of the project, assessed by career civil servants.”
“Each of the awards … was selected because of its technology and the project’s potential to reduce the cost of solar energy for American families and businesses,” she added.
Van Jones did not respond to requests for comment.
From Tech Crunch:
Solar Mosaic, a startup that’s aiming to be the “Kickstarter for solar projects,” has been awarded a $2 million grant from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) Sunshot Initiative.
Solar Mosaic, which also goes by simply Mosaic, is building an online platform that facilitates crowdfunding of solar projects. Last month the Oakland, California-based company closed on a $2.5 million Series Afunding round led by Spring Ventures.
The grant was presented to Mosaic today by DOE Secretary Steven Chu at the SunShot Grand Challenge Summit in Denver. The SunShot initiative, which is modeled after President Kennedy’s“Moon Shot” challenge, is aimed at getting the cost of solar below $1 per watt by 2020. Mosaic says that its crowdfunding platform will help realize this goal by allowing regular people to invest their money in solar projects large and small — according to the company, 25 percent of the price of solar installations today comes from financing and customer acquisition costs.
To date, Mosaic has facilitated the crowdfunding for five projects in its beta mode, in which more than 400 people invested more than $350,000 in five rooftop power plants in California and Arizona. It plans to put its venture capital and grant money toward building out its platform for crowdfunding on a larger scale.
And, from the Solar mosaic FAQ page: http://solarmosaic.com/create/faq
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1 comment:
Uh, their app allows people to invest in energy-producing, income generating PV systems. It's not a mutual fund to invest in risky solar start-ups.
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