Crimson Red Sports

The New York Times reports on another “politically connected clean energy start-up that has relied heavily on an Obama administration loan guarantee and is now facing financial turmoil.”

The company is Nevada Geothermal Power, which like Solyndra, the now-famous California solar company, is struggling with debt after encountering problems at its only operating plant.

After a series of technical missteps that are draining Nevada Geothermal’s cash reserves, its own auditor concluded in a filing released last week that there was “significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

While the federal government’s investment in Nevada Geothermal — $79 million in loan guarantees plus about $70 million in grants — is substantially less than the $530 million (in loan guarantees) it put up for Solyndra, this has all the familiar signs of corporate cronyism run amok:

The Nevada Geothermal project has benefited from the support of a bipartisan collection of Nevada politicians, most notably Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat and the Senate majority leader, who has called his home state the “Saudi Arabia of geothermal energy.”