June 4, 2009
Dear President Obama:
You are the third president I have written over the past 10 years requesting help on renewable green energy projects; the others being, of course, Presidents Clinton and Bush. Letters to them may be viewed at our web site http://home.earthlink.net/~tpco/index.html . Neither responded and what action they took regarding renewable green energy was symbolic rhetoric with no “pop” at all. Hopefully you are different.
We are fully
aware of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and the $6 billion in loan guarantees it provides for projects such
as ours that make renewable energy and commend you for it. Unfortunately, applications for ARRA funds,
including loan applications, are technical documents governed by complicated
federal procurement rules and regulations. Submissions must satisfy these
requirements of "substantial completion" before a reviewing federal
agency can consider their merits. If a submission does not conform to the
requirements, including the demonstrations of eligibility and relevance and the
inclusion of all required supporting information, the award and funding process
may be significantly delayed or even closed off. Under ARRA in
particular, as multiple applications likely will be submitted for each
opportunity, it is important for an applicant to ensure that its documents pass
review for completeness and eligibility from the start. This requires
expensive, experienced counsel familiar with the details of the various
government procurement and award rules and regulations to give an applicant
invaluable help through the confusing application process, but even that will
guarantee nothing. This in and of itself
places the ARRA loan guarantees outside the reach of countless small projects
such as ours and takes the “pop” out of the program. I propose that projects less than 15 MW be
exempt from such onerous application requirements and simply be required to
provide a detailed description of the project.
Sincerely,
Michael R. Knauff
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