Source: eere.energy.gov Cathy Zoi

Cathy Zoi, who was the Acting Under Secretary for Energy and Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, is going to work for a new cleantech private equity fund sponsored by George Soros and a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

The new fund will invest in...wait for it..."the energy and resource sectors."

VentureBeat reports:

The new fund is called Silver Lake Kraftwerk (the press release refers to it as “SLKW”) and will be led by Adam Grosser, who spent a decade as general partner at Foundation Capital, where he worked on major cleantech investments like Silver Spring Networks and Enernoc. He also previously worked at Apple, Sony and Lucasfilms. Cathy Zoi will also join the fund in April; she recently left her job as the Department of Energy’s undersecretary for energy and assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

In other words, the revolving door keeps on spinning. Thanks for all that transparency Obama.

Zoi, who joined the Obama Administration in 2009, became controversial during early 2010, after it was realized she had a financial interest in two companies that were poised to profit from government spending that promoted energy efficiency.

McCathy Newspapers reports:

Cathy Zoi, the assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy, owns between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of stock in Landis+Gyr, a Swiss-based manufacturer of special electric meters that are used to create an efficient "smart" grid of electricity use.

Her husband, Robin Roy, owns options on at least 120,000 shares of Serious Materials, a leading manufacturer of energy-efficient windows that's been singled out for praise by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. As an officer of the company, Roy receives options on an additional 2,500 shares every month and will continue to do so until October 2012.

Did I mention that Obama gave a shout out to Serious materials in a speech in March 2009?

It went a little something like this...

“Serious Materials, just reopened a manufacturing plant outside of Pittsburgh. Last year, that factory was shuttered and more than one hundred jobs were lost. The town was devastated. Today, that factory is whirring back to life, and Serious Materials is rehiring the folks who lost their jobs. And these workers will now have a new mission: producing some of the most energy-efficient windows in the world.”

But we can put all that behind us, because now Zoi has left the Obama Administration and will go back to work making an honest living in the private sector, where she can put all the knowledge she gained from working for the Department of Energy to work for the private equity firms. Thata girl Zoi!

Oh, did we mention that Zoi also has knowledge of Pacific Gas & Electric's short-and long-term planning for electricity and natural gas?

Well, at least that's one of her attributes stated on her DOE bio page.

...Ms. Zoi worked on energy modeling for ICF International and was an analyst for Pacific Gas & Electric

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[PCG  Loading...      ()   ], conducting short- and long-term planning for electricity and natural gas at the utility scale. Ms. Zoi has served on boards and advisory committees of a variety of companies in the clean technology sector.

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