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A green energy firm with close ties to the White House was among the very first companies to take advantage of tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Democrats' flagship climate package.
Form Energy — a Massachusetts-based company that has developed a utility-scale iron-air battery system — announced in December, just four months after Congress passed and President signed the IRA, that it would invest up to $760 million to construct a factory in Weirton, West Virginia. The factory is among the first clean energy projects to directly benefit from the IRA and has been touted by the White House.
"These investments are creating good-paying jobs, including union jobs and jobs that don’t require a four-year degree in industries that will boost U.S. competitiveness, rebuild infrastructure, strengthen supply chains, and help build a clean energy economy," stated a White House fact sheet in March highlighting private sector investments in West Virginia including Form Energy's.
Congress passed the IRA largely along party lines in August 2022. The legislation, which Democrats have heralded as a crowning achievement of the Biden administration, was mainly able to pass the Senate as a result of West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's support.
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President Biden moves to give Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., the pen he used to sign the Inflation Reduction Act on Aug. 16 at the White House. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
"West Virginia continues to be a leader in energy innovation, and the good-paying jobs and new economic opportunities this will bring are exactly what I had in mind as I negotiated the Inflation Reduction Act," Manchin said on Dec. 22, the day of the announcement.
Form Energy, meanwhile, raised $450 million in private funding thanks, in large part, to the IRA's tax credits, Form Energy CEO Mateo Jaramillo told The Wall Street Journal last year, adding that the legislation "makes everybody feel that much more confident." A key investor of the battery maker is Breakthrough Energy, billionaire Bill Gates' green energy investment firm.
The IRA, which includes a staggering $369 billion in climate investments, provides tax relief for clean energy factories built on former sites of dirty energy facilities and for battery storage projects like the one proposed by Form Energy. The company's factory is slated to be constructed on the site of a shut-down steel mill.
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"After a year-long nationwide site selection process that started with identifying over 500 candidate locations across 16 states, it became abundantly clear that Weirton, West Virginia – a historic steel community that sits on a river and has the rich heritage and know-how to make great things out of iron – is the ideal location for our first commercial battery production factory," Jaramillo said in a statement at the time.
President Biden has aggressively pushed clean energy as part of his climate agenda. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
However, on Nov. 9, a little over a month before the announcement, Jaramillo visited the White House to meet privately with Kristina Costa, the deputy director of the White House Office of Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation, visitor logs showed. Costa was hired for the position by White House clean energy czar John Podesta who President Biden chose to oversee IRA implementation in early September.
In addition to Jaramillo, Nidhi Thakar, Form Energy's vice president of policy and regulatory; Michael Carr, a partner at green energy lobbying and consulting firm Boundary Stone; and Yogin Kothari, a senior vice president at Boundary Stone, were also present at the meeting.
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Form Energy paid $200,000 to Carr and Kothari last year to lobby for the company's policy priorities, according to federal lobbying disclosures.
And Thakar previously served as a co-chair of Clean Energy for Biden, an organization established to help President Biden get elected in 2020, according to archived copies of the group's website which has since been scrubbed. In August 2021, Thakar and Podesta were also named to the board of directors of Clean Energy for America, a group "committed to advancing an equitable and inclusive clean energy economy."
Thakar and Jaramillo also attended the IRA signing ceremony at the White House on Sept. 13. Also, on Oct. 24, Thakar attended the White House Diwali reception.
White House Office of Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation Deputy Director Kristina Costa speaks during a panel in 2019. Costa met with Form Energy executives and lobbyists in November. (C-SPAN 2/Video screenshot)
A White House spokesperson, though, said the Biden administration wasn't involved in Form Energy's selection process for its West Virginia factory.
"The White House was not involved in this decision and did not encourage any site selection," White House spokesperson Michael Kikukawa told Fox News Digital. "This was an independent decision by a private company based on its own siting process and investment requirements."
"We are proud that the President’s Investing in America agenda — including the Inflation Reduction Act—is unleashing private sector investments in communities across the country," Kikukawa added.
Kikukawa additionally noted that Form Energy was not the first company to announce a project enabled by the Inflation Reduction Act.
White House climate czar John Podesta speaks during a White House electrification summit on Dec. 14. Podesta served on the board of Clean Energy for America with Form Energy Vice President Nidhi Thakar. (White House/Video screenshot)
"The White House was not involved in any capacity in Form's siting decision," Form Energy spokesperson Sarah Bray told Fox News Digital. "We conducted an exhaustive site selection process for the location of our first high volume battery manufacturing facility, and Weirton, West Virginia came back as the clear choice for the many reasons mentioned."
"Both Senator Manchin and Senator Capito are supportive of bringing our battery manufacturing facility to the State of West Virginia; when it is in full operation, it will employ 750 people with an average salary of at least $63,000 a year," she said.
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Bray added that Thakar's role with Clean Energy for Biden predated her job at Form Energy and her role with Clean Energy for America is held in a "personal capacity outside of her position at Form Energy." Bray also said the November meeting at the White House between Thakar, Jaramillo, Carr, Kothari and Costa was broadly about Form Energy's technology development.
A spokesperson for Manchin said the West Virginia lawmaker was excited to celebrate the battery factory last year, but didn't comment on his involvement with the project.
"Senator Manchin never misses an opportunity to highlight the abundant resources and resilient workforce that West Virginia offers prospective businesses," Sam Runyon, a spokesperson for Manchin, told Fox News Digital. "Form Energy is no exception and he is thrilled they have decided to expand their footprint in Weirton."
And Mitch Carmichael, the secretary of West Virginia's Department of Economic Development, said the state worked to attract Form Energy's investment, but that the state didn't coordinate with the White House.
"I'm personally just thrilled about this deal," Carmichael said in an interview. "I had to walk this through in a million different ways in putting this transaction together. So, we're very pleased with it. But we did not reach out to the White House at all."
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