Romney’s $15 Million Green Energy Fund

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Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney cam­paigns in Virginia

Since Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney is rais­ing money in Pitts­burgh today, it’s worth spend­ing a few min­utes look­ing at his energy policies.

The for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor has blasted the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion for pro­vid­ing loan guar­an­tees to now-bankrupt solar com­pany Solyn­dra. But Politico’s Ben Smith took a look at Romney’s tenure in the Bay State, and dis­cov­ered he boosted alter­na­tive energy projects with gov­ern­ment funding.

In 2003, Rom­ney launched the Mass­a­chu­setts Green Energy Fund, a $15 mil­lion project aimed at pro­vid­ing “an oppor­tu­nity to cap­i­tal­ize on two emerg­ing trends: the grow­ing level of invest­ment inter­est in clean energy and the impor­tance of Mass­a­chu­setts’ aca­d­e­mic and cor­po­rate R&D in form­ing clean energy tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies,” accord­ing to its website.

At the time, Rom­ney called the fund a “spring­board for the com­mon­wealth by focus­ing on job cre­ation in the renew­able energy sector.”

And it is in the nature of ven­ture funds that some of their projects fail. That’s why the pri­vate sec­tor funds can get such high returns, and why some energy projects seen as hav­ing a huge pub­lic upside — from nuclear to solar — have con­vinced gov­ern­ment offi­cials to back them.

And so while Rom­ney has crit­i­cized Solyn­dra on the cam­paign trail as a major fail­ure of the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, his Green Energy Fund invested in sev­eral com­pa­nies that have since failed or not lived up to expectations.