WASHINGTON (AP) — As he campaigned for the presidency, Joe Biden promised to spend billions of dollars to “save the world” from climate change. One of the largest players in the solar industry was ready.
Executives, officials and major investors in First Solar, the largest domestic maker of solar panels, donated at least $2 million to Democrats in 2020, including $1.5 million to Biden’s successful bid for the White House. After he won, the company spent $2.8 million more lobbying his administration and Congress, records show — an effort that included high-level meetings with top administration officials.
The strategy was a dramatic departure from the Arizona-based company’s posture under then-President Donald Trump, whom corporate officials publicly called out as hostile toward renewable energy. It has also paid massive dividends as First Solar became perhaps the biggest beneficiary of an estimated $1 trillion in environmental spending enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act, a major piece of legislation Biden signed into law in 2022 after it cleared Congress solely with Democratic votes.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-solar-inflation-reduction-act-dca914675cd0855004214d82aab5b10cSince then, First Solar’s stock price has doubled and its profits have soared thanks to new federal subsidies that could be worth as much as $10 billion over a decade. The success has also delivered a massive windfall to a small group of Democratic donors who invested heavily in the company.
Founded in 1999 by a private equity group that included a Walmart fortune heir, First Solar went public in 2006, the same year former Vice President Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” helped raise consciousness about the threat of climate change. Company officials cultivated a constituency with Democrats during Barack Obama’s administration, which in turn subsidized their industry — and First Solar — through billions of dollars in government-backed loans.
When the Biden administration started writing rules to implement the Democrats’ new law, First Solar executives and lobbyists met at least four times in late 2022 and 2023 with administration officials, including John Podesta, who oversaw the measure’s environmental provisions. One of the more intimate gatherings was attended by Podesta, Widmar and Sloan, as well as First Solar’s contract lobbyist, Claudia James, an old friend of Podesta’s who worked for decades at a lobbying firm run by Podesta’s brother, Tony, records show.
The law has been consequential for First Solar.The company will benefit from billions of dollars in lucrative tax credits for domestic clean energy manufacturers — a policy aimed at putting the U.S. on a more competitive footing with green energy giant China. Though intended to reward clean energy businesses, the credits can also be sold on the open market to companies that have little to do with fighting climate change.
Last December, First Solar agreed to sell roughly $650 million of these credits to a tech company — providing a massive influx of cash, courtesy of the U.S. government.
Investors in the company, including a handful of major Democratic donors, have also benefited as First Solar’s share price soars.
Farhad “Fred” Ebrahimi, co-founder of the software company Quark, was added to Forbes billionaires list in 2023 thanks to the skyrocketing value of his roughly 5% stake in First Solar, financial disclosures show. Ebrahimi, along with his wife and family, contributed at least $1 million to Biden’s 2020 election effort, according to campaign finance disclosures.
More recently, First Solar paid $350 million to settle a securities fraud lawsuit — an agreement announced shortly before the case was set to go to trial. The company denied wrongdoing and the settlement in 2020 included no admission of liability.
Details included in the case file offer a damning portrait. Investors accused company officials of lying about the scope of a defect that caused panels to fail prematurely, court records state. It was a decision, investors argued, driven by company executives’ desire to preserve First Solar’s stock price.
But while First Solar officials downplayed the extent of the problem, some of them dumped personally held stock, according to court records. Mark Ahearn, the company’s founder and chairman, alone sold off more than $427 million in shares before the extent of the defect was made public and the stock tumbled. The ordeal ultimately cost the company $260 million to fix, court records state.
