By Robert Bradley Jr.
“What about the triple-digit number of creditors who banked on a loser? What about taxpayers who funded around 30 percent of the solar investment? … Ben Catt is just another rent-seeker, a political crony, like Sunnova’s John Berger, benefitting at the expense of just about everyone else.”
MasterResource has chronicled the rise and fall of major U.S. solar firms this year. The rooftop solar business is in shambles, with leaders such as Sunnova becoming worthless and defaulting on their long-term projects. And more recently, utility-scale solar developers are in trouble despite the last-minute deal to continue major tax subsidies until next year.
Add this to the list. As reported in Solar Power World, (November 7, 2025):
National solar developer Pine Gate Renewables is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and selling its solar and energy storage project portfolio and independent power producer business. This will include completed and under-development projects, of which the company stated there is 10 GWDC in progress.
Founded nine years ago, Pine Gate has commercial and utility solar business in 32 states. With 500 MW of development in 2022, the company made the 2023 Top Solar Contractors List.
No less than 119 creditors are left in the lurch. The company’s press release–“Pine Gate Renewables Announces Comprehensive Agreements to Facilitate Strategic and Value-Maximizing Sales Process“–did not explain why the company failed despite receiving a raft of special government favors. Instead, CEO Ben Catt stated:
“Since our founding almost 10 years ago, Pine Gate has grown tremendously, deploying innovative solar and energy storage projects at scale that enable us to deliver renewable, reliable, and affordable energy. To ensure that our projects continue generating renewable energy, we made the strategic decision to commence this court-supervised sales process. With significant financial support from certain of our current lenders, we’re confident that we will successfully conduct a competitive sales process that reflects the inherent value of our nationwide portfolio of solar and energy storage projects.
Catt continues:
I’m grateful for the hard work and dedication of the Pine Gate team who has been key to helping us drive the renewable energy transition. As we move through this process, we remain committed to supporting our valued project partners across our more than 100 operational solar facilities and forging ahead with our projects in development and under construction.
This is winner talk, not loser talk. What about the triple-digit number of creditors who banked on a loser? What about taxpayers who funded around 30 percent of the solar investment? What if these projects had been sustainable from consumer demand (such as natural-gas-fired plants)? Ben Catt is just another rent-seeker, a political crony, like Sunnova’s John Berger, benefitting at the expense of just about everyone else.
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Rent seeking crony is too kind. Catt is a crook, a Ponzi schemer, and like Madoff belongs in prison.
Is this newspeak for receivership, aka bankruptcy proceedings?
Ah. I see. To ‘facilitate’ this sales process we’re going bankrupt. I get it now. It’s facilitating the process and ‘maximising’ stakeholder value.
💸💸💸 ✈️🏝️🍹
Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. Like all such scams.
Gobbledygook!
If you cannot use simple language you are trying to deceive your hearers or simply do not know what you are talking about, perhaps both.
From the K. Harris school of word salad rhetoric.
In a “market” dependent on subsidies, one is not doing economics, but politics. So a courtier lost favor? Inevitable.
“the company made the 2023 Top Solar Contractors List.”
Well, at #23. But bankruptcy happens, in any line of business. After all, Donald Trump filed four times, owing vastly more sums than Pine Gate did. As he said to Newsweek:
“I do play with the bankruptcy laws – they’re very good for me”
And the irrelevant comment award for today goes to….
All that free solar seems to be costing taxpayers and investors a lot of money.
Actually, Nick has been quite creative this time.
I’m surprised that someone so professionally ignorant is capable of such an underhanded skill to connect completely unrelated dots into such a strawman manner.
Climate denier “Nick,You shot my dog ”
Nick “That’s nothing compared to Hiroshima”
I hope some day Nick will be able to explain us how Solar Companies can even go bancrupt considering how supercheap and ubercompetitiv they officially are.
Especially when we take the subsidies into account?
The first thing I’d do if I could produce supercheap Solar energy would be a Solar Farm.
Those tremendous profits would then finance all the Solar panels I produce with supercheap Solarenergy.
Either I’m a genius( or the rest of the world is too stupid to follow this very basic concept) or Solar energy is not competitive and only attracts professional scammers.
In some cases, taxpayers are further on the hook for cleaning up hazardous wastes left behind by bankrupt solar companies.
Nice analysis. Nick, meet woodshed.
A few of Trump’s businesses went bankrupt. He has never been bankrupt.
Anything to say about the demise of the Net Zero Banking Alliance?
Yes, Trump owned some casinos in Atlantic City that went bankrupt after an economic downturn.
When the economy goes into recession discretionary spending decreases, including spending at casinos, which caused Trump to declare bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy wasn’t because Trump was a bad businessman, as his detractors imply, it was because of temporary economic conditions of the U.S. economy.
I’m not sure but Trump may still own one or more casinos. He did recover the casinos from bankruptcy. I think he sold one or more, also.
During the same time period, a lot of casinos in Atlantic City were closing their doors Trump’s casino was not an unusual case.
“The bankruptcy wasn’t because Trump was a bad businessman”
That is what he says:
“I’ve used the laws of this country to pare debt…. We’ll have the company. We’ll throw it into a chapter. We’ll negotiate with the banks. We’ll make a fantastic deal. You know, it’s like on The Apprentice. It’s not personal. It’s just business.”
Fantastic deal!
Yep. Just like Ivanpah, Solyndra, Sunpower, Titan, Vision, ADT, Sunnova and now Pinegate.
This is what GROK says about Trump bankruptcies:
“That’s a total of six Chapter 11 filings across [Trump’s] casino and hotel companies between 1991 and 2014.
Key points Trump and his supporters often emphasize:
These were corporate bankruptcies, not personal. The companies used Chapter 11 to restructure debt while continuing to operate.Trump personally did not file for bankruptcy and emerged with his personal wealth intact (he reduced or eliminated personal guarantees on some debt during restructurings).He has described the filings as a normal and smart use of U.S. bankruptcy laws available to any business.Critics point out:
Six bankruptcies is unusually high for a major real-estate and casino operator.Hundreds of millions of dollars in bondholder and bank debt were wiped out or restructured, meaning investors and lenders took losses.”It sounds as though the money lost in the Trump corporate bankruptcies were private sector funds. It is my understanding that solar company bankruptcies are losing taxpayer dollars. Who lost more money from others, Trump or the solar companies?
Thank you CD.
The Corporate Bunkruptcy legal provisions & processes needed some explaining to a few here.
It’s more a “Liquidation” exercise for the corporate entity.
The various investors & stakeholders in the entity have to manage their own financial impacts.
For our non-US friends:
There are two types of bankruptcies:
Chapter 11 is a court supervised restructuring while the company continues to operate. Debt is renegotiated but not necessarily written off (although some portion often is). Some assets may be liquidated or taken over by creditors but the intent is for the company to reemerge as a profitable enterprise.
Chapter 13 is a court supervised liquidation. Essentially everything is sold, the proceeds are distributed to the creditors as per the priority of the different debt instruments and when the money runs out everyone not paid off takes it in the shorts.
Chapter 11 often leads to Chapter 13.
Thanks to CD and Frazier for adding good information to the conversation.
So what is the big deal about Pine Gate?
They lost the public’s money…are you being obtuse?
Chapter 11 often leads to Chapter 13.
A more important question would be what do casinos have in common with solar energy production, and what is the difference?
It seems that both are a gamble, but at least there is SOME chance of the individual winning at the casino.
“It seems that both are a gamble”
People gamble at the casino, but the house always wins.
Exactly my point. In the case of the ”’renewables” scam, the house (the elite and their political cronies) win, and the people lose–not just cash but freedom.
Carney’s exit strategy from his net-zero fiance industry play right from the get-go was to retreat to Canadian politics.
Where he was always a close insider, and strings-puller on Trudeau.
It was kind of fortunate for Carney that the storm clouds gathered for his net zero, and politically for Trudeau at the same time.
So it was –
“pack up Justin-boy, your gig as useful idiot is kaput. I need this office now”.
Ooooh! I’m saving that one 😅
😃 😵💫
“It’s only a flesh-wound”
Nick, I have to agree with you and Trump about canny property and other moguls using the “call in the insolvency/ administrators / receivers / wind-up / liquidate experts” strategy when a venture goes tits-up.
See, THAT’S how canny moguls DON’T GO “BANKRUPT”.
They follow the legal exit processes, lick their financial wounds on this one, and live to fight another day.
And do not steal Government.ie. Taxpayer’s money and further buy politicians…they suck it up and go on, or not.
Funny how bankruptcy is so prevalent in the solar power industry.
Love your attempt at distraction. Pathetic as usual.
And for this you are nominated for the Sophistry Class 1 award.
Just send in !1.99 and ten box tops to get your medal.
Yes, but no one forced people at the point of a gun to invest with Trump, whether they wanted to gamble or not, and he did not pretend that gambling at a casino was a better way to earn a living than having a job.
Net Zero is forcing people at the point of a gun to invest in modalities like solar generation and trying to convince them that unproven technologies are superior to long-standing, proven ones.
True. Bankruptcy law is a government intervention into a free market.
As others have said, Trump never personally went bankrupt. You should use a more appropriate example. Four U.S. presidents personally went through a formal or de facto bankruptcy: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and William McKinley. Bankruptcy is a threat to anyone with the courage to start a business. In the case of commercial solar power, it seems the entire industry cannot make a profit without continued support from the public coffers. That’s quite different.
Not did Mr Catt, or anyone associated with Pine Gate.
“In the case of commercial solar power, it seems the entire industry cannot make a profit without continued support from the public coffers.”
There is no doubt about it. Windmills and Industrial Solar are not viable without taxpayer dollars. Warren Buffet said the only reason to invest in windmills and solar was to take advantage of the taxpayer subsidies.
No taxpayer subsidies = No Windmills and Industrial Solar. It’s as simple as that.
Reading Benn’s hallelujah I was reminded of Lipstick on a Pig.
Yes, he made it sound *so* good. Bankruptcy in its best light.
Look closely at the ‘ clean’ lie. What has been made cleaner? Why, only some or most of the gas powered efflux. Is that dirty today? Sue them, then.
You mean the government subsidies and special pricing weren’t enough to keep them in business?
Yup! There so-called “business model” boils down to “trough feeding” at taxpayer expense.
Producing a product that has negative real market value is inherently risky.
Maybe they forgot the 10% special business expense?
From the article: “helping us drive the renewable energy transition.”
The renewable energy transition is dead. It’s all over but the crying.
It was stillborn, but they kept it on life support and still refuse to admit it’s dead.
You CANNOT run modern civilization on breezes and sunshine. And all the energy inputs to manufacture the worse-than-useless crap to attempt to do so all come from…COAL, OIL, AND GAS.
Story Tip: There is a fight brewing in Victoria in Eastern Australia over access for renewable generators transmission lines.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/fiery-scenes-as-farmers-clash-with-government-workers-in-tense-renewables-standoff/ar-AA1RFeZu?
This is typical Renewable Energy politics:
Q. What about the cost of the infrastructure?
A. That’s an infrastructure problem, not a RE problem.
Q. What about the land requirements for the extra infrastructure required?
A. That’s a government problem, not a RE problem.
Q. What about the intermittentcy problem?
A. That’s an infrastructure problem, not a RE problem.
You see, it’s easy when it’s always someone else’s problem!
I guess AI Gemini will conclude it was a win win like all the other lobbyist con games.
Correcting Pine Gate Renewables CEO Ben Catt’s bureaucrat-speak statement given in the above article:
“Since our founding almost 10 years ago, Pine Gate has
grown tremendously, deploying innovative solar and energy storage projects at scale that enable us to deliver renewable, reliable, and affordable energybeen mismanaged to this point. To ensure that our projects continue generating renewable energy, we made the strategic decisionto commence this court-supervised sales processto go bankrupt. Withsignificant financial support from certain of our current lendersexpectation that our current 119 creditors will shovel good money after bad, we’re confident that we will successfully conduct acompetitive salesfire-sale process that reflects theinherentactual value (including bond, collateral and warranty liabilities) of our nationwide portfolio of solar and energy storage projects.”There.
You will never get elected to a political office.
(That is a compliment).
Is there some irony here in naming a Company after Watergate? Pins Gate? Are you kidding?
The scale of debt ($4.4 billion) versus available financing and asset sale proceeds suggests unsecured creditors may face steep haircuts.
Industry commentary implies that recoveries could be well below 50%, and possibly in the single-digit to low double-digit range, aligning with the “ten cents on the dollar” benchmark for distressed cases. [masterresource.org]
Wind and solar don’t work, everybody knows that, stop wasting our time, money and resources on crap that doesn’t work.
In the year to date 24000 US companies have declared bankruptcy which is an increase of about 5% on 2024. Given that it is hardly surprising that a number of renewable energy companies would go bankrupt. Moreover about 50% of companies go bankrupt in their first 5 years. Given that you would expect a number of solar energy companies to go bankrupt each and every year.
How many of that 24,000 were receiving direct taxpayer funded revenue subsidies?
Note, direct revenue subsidies don’t include tax deductions that all business lawfully take advantage of.