Whirrrrrr goes the revolving door, delivering yet more dollars to connected ex-feds via the “green energy transition” Dems love to wax lyrical about.
The latest scandal centers on Persefoni, an emissions-tracking company that counts at least three high-ranking former Securities and Exchange Commission officials as members.
Which just might have something to do with how it seemingly won huge sway in writing a new SEC rule demanding companies above a certain size must hand over their CO2 emissions data (including from their suppliers).
The company, formed in 2020, is now poised to reap millions from firms flocking to purchase its services: a software platform for comprehensively tracking CO2.
The SEC took six meetings — six! — with the for-profit company as the rule was being written.
Allison Herren Lee, appointed by President Joe Biden as acting chair of the SEC, was in charge of the public comment period around the new rule and stepped down in 2022 shortly before the rule was revealed.
Guess where she went? Persefoni.
There, she joined Kristina Wyatt, another SEC honcho already on the board. The firm’s vice president of global regulatory climate disclosure? Emily Pierce, another SEC alum.
The company’s CEO Kentaro Kawamori sees big bucks ahead: “You’re going to have a Salesforce-type of success,” he gloated the same month Herren Lee joined up.
It’s easy to succeed in business when you’re best buds with the feds who make the rules you profit from!
But this is only the latest green shuck-and-jive.
In 2022, the Biden administration approved a desert solar farm on 2,600 acres of public land in Southern California for Intersect Power.
Intersect has drawn the ire of green groups like the Sierra Club and the California Wilderness Coalition — and its construction so far has outraged residents in the proposed farm area, with one saying “they have just raped the desert.”
Why did Intersect get the OK?
We’re sure the fact that CEO Sheldon Kimber gave Biden’s campaign $180,000 and helped raise another $3.2 million had nothing to do with it.
And remember Solyndra?
The Enron of renewables served as a centerpiece of Barack Obama’s green dreams and got a massive government loan — $535 million — of taxpayer bucks in 2009, even as its execs were lying about numbers to make the company seem successful.
It went belly up two years later.
And guess what?
After the company’s implosion, emails emerged showing major Obama donor George Kaiser, whose foundation owned a third of the company, discussing lobbying the Obama White House about loans (Team Obama steadfastly lied no such thing had ever happened).
Remember this the next time the president or climate czar John Kerry or any other Green New Dealer begins to sing the praises of this or that green firm — and when they start handing out your money.