Efforts to curb solar industry subsidies fail amid opposition from Iron Rangers

An effort to curb state subsidies and other perks for Minnesota firms making solar panels fizzled in the final days of the legislative session amid opposition from an Iron Range company with political ties to the DFL.
But the company, Silicon Energy of Mountain Iron, will soon face scrutiny on another front.

Auditor Jim Nobles

Legislative Auditor James Nobles says he will investigate the $7 million in government loans for Silicon Energy as part of a wider probe of a state agency’s controversial economic development projects.
“Given the size and importance of it, it will be in our scope, for sure,” Nobles said.
Nobles is evaluating whether the agency, the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB), has made smart bets with loans and grants intended to create jobs in northern Minnesota. The agency uses taconite taxes paid by mining companies to finance economic development.  
Silicon Energy has fallen far short of its goals for job creation despite the IRRRB loans and the state subsidies. Some House Republicans oppose the subsidies as costly and unfair, but Senate DFLers defend them as good public policy.

This week the solar industry won a reprieve when the Minnesota Senate blocked an attempt by the House to curtail the state subsidy, which lowers the cost of solar panels produced in Minnesota by providing payments to buyers. The Senate also rejected a bid by the House to end a policy encouraging the government to buy Minnesota-made panels over those made elsewhere.
The bid to curb the solar perks ran into stiff opposition from Iron Range DFLers.
“For pretty much the entire Iron Range delegation, it was like, ‘That’s a non-starter,’” Rep. Jason Metsa, DFL-Virginia, whose district includes the Mountain Iron solar plant, said Tuesday.

Rep. Pat Garofalo

Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, who proposed the curbs, said some environmentalists regarded any changes in the solar program “as a step back.” Garofalo argues there are less costly and more effective ways to reduce energy pollution than incentives for Minnesota-made solar panels. He says the solar preferences will likely be challenged again next year.
Silicon Energy said it can’t survive in Minnesota without the breaks. Over the years, the California backers of the firm have contributed at least $24,000 to Minnesota politicians. Nearly all went to DFLers, much of it to Iron Range legislators who have been the driving force in getting and protecting the solar preferences.
In 2010, Tom Rukavina, then a DFL House member from Virginia, and Sen. David Tomassoni, DFL-Chisholm, sponsored the customer incentives for buying Minnesota-made solar panels.

Former state Rep. Tom Rukavina

That year Rukavina and Tomassoni played another role beneficial to Silicon Energy. As members of the IRRRB, they voted to approve $5.1 million in loans to Silicon Energy and to a city development authority for building a solar factory for the firm in Mountain Iron.
Rukavina, who is now a St. Louis County commissioner, was running for governor in 2010 and his loan vote came after California backers of Silicon Energy contributed $1,500 to his campaign.
Silicon Energy opened in Mountain Iron in 2011. Although the state preference program for the solar energy was exanded in 2013, the firm shut down production for a large part of 2014. Company president Gary Shaver says it has 11 workers in Mountain Iron, less than half the workforce it once predicted.
Nevertheless, the IRRRB gave the company another loan – for $1.95 million – last December.

Part of larger probe

When he announced plans to evaluate the IRRRB in April, Nobles said a probe “could provide useful information regarding investments the agency has made and its effectiveness in developing businesses and job opportunities in the agency’s service area.”

He said “grants, loans, and other expenditures made by the agency” might be subjects for scrutiny.

Regarding the relationship between IRRRB and Silicon Energy, “we’ll be looking at that one and at a lot of others,” Nobles said in an interview last week.ut Jeff Wolf is leading a hard-running team on a sprint that could bring more than Olympic gold.Heat Biologics, has been traversing the country telling investors, analysts and regulators why his company’s oncology platform deserves their attention.s getting some traction. Only two months ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a coveted fast track designation for the company’s immune therapy, code named HS-410 (Vesigenurtacel L), targeting bladder cancer. means that the FDA will take a range of actions to work more closely with Heat to speed the review process, in the belief that Heat might be developing a platform technology that can save lives and reduce suffering, initially in people with so-called non-muscle invasive bladder cancer.

Now the company is starting a new phase one-b trial of its other lead product, Viagenpumatucel-L (HS-110) to treat non-small cell lung cancer. Heat expects to enroll the first patient shortly in this new trial combining HS-110 with multiple immune modulating strategies.

Making an ImPACT

The therapies are based on the company's Immune Pan Antigen Cytotoxic Therapy (ImPACT) platform. The company believes it’s a platform technology because early testing indicates it can coax the body’s own immune defense weapons, called killer T cells, to attack numerous forms of cancer.
HS-110 is Heat's first product candidate in its series of ImPACT drugs. And HS-410 is already in phase two clinical trials, which evaluate its effectiveness as a vaccination in extending the time of disease recurrence compared to placebo.
Heat was founded in 2008 to commercialize the cancer-fighting approach discovered at the University of Miami. Wolf soon decided Miami wasn’t the right environment to build the company, explored several major biotech hubs, and picked the Research Triangle area after meeting with specialists at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.
Wolf said NCBiotech convinced him he could get the talent and support he needed in North Carolina to build Heat into a successful biopharmaceutical company, so he moved his company, consisting of himself and one employee, into a temporary rental office at NCBiotech in 2011.

NCBiotech helped propel company's growth

Professionals in NCBiotech’s Business and Technology Development group worked closely with Wolf to help hone his pitch to investors. He also joined them and CEOs of other life science start-ups on NCBiotech-led visits to venture capital companies in Palo Alto and Boston.
NCBiotech provided Heat its first outside funding, a $225,000 Strategic Growth Loan. That opened doors to more investment opportunity for Wolf. Heat was able to repay the loan well ahead of schedule as other investment support came in.
Heat got another boost from one of NCBiotech’s $3,000 industrial intern awards in 2012, to help it reach the public-trading milestone of an initial public offering of stock on the NASDAQ exchange. By the time of the IPO offering of 2.5 million shares at $10 apiece, Heat had also garnered some $5 million in other outside investment.
- See more at: http://ncbiotech.org/article/heat-biologics-spring-mode-two-cancer-threats/79801#sthash.wewvwasr.dpuf