A year after the US government raced to meet a deadline to finish loan agreements with dozens of clean energy companies, less than half the total money promised has been handed over.
Technical questions and companies’ own failures in hitting contractual milestones are behind some of the holdups. But government officials fearful of taking a risk on firms that could collapse may have also caused some of the delays. The political firestorm after the failure of Solyndra, a solar panel maker that went bankrupt last year after receiving more than $527 million in a government loan, may have made the authorities wary, industry experts and investors say.