Detroit –– Daniel Foster nicely summarizes below the cozy relationship between Assistant Energy Secretary Cathy Zoi and companies benefiting from her department’s green regulations. Let’s call it a Green Triangle — as Zoi has also benefited from her relationship with congressmen like Rep. Gary Peters (D., Mich.) who controls the purse strings for Zoi’s DOE programs.
From my post for NRO last July (“How the Green Iron Triangle Works”):
Peters has been lionized for his green “leadership” in advertisements run in his Congressional district by the Climate Protection Action Fund (CPAF is also known as the Alliance for Climate Protection), a Gore-funded group founded in 2007 by ex-Clinton/Gore staffer Cathy Zoi.
In addition to steering millions in Waxman-Markey revenues to his Detroit friends, Peters is also a prominent broker of the Department of Energy’s $25 billion loan program encouraging U.S. carmakers to manufacture the greener cars mandated by Congress to meet new emissions rules. The loan program comes on top of DOE’s existing, multi-million-dollar research grants to the same automakers to develop alternative-fuel technologies. (The) programs are administered by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
(In 2009), CPAF’s Cathy Zoi was confirmed as DOE’s Assistant Secretary for . . . Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy! And one month later, CPAF’s favorite green ad pitchman, Rep. Peters, introduced a new bill to almost double new Assistant Secretary Zoi’s vehicle-research program for automakers to $550 million for 2010.