Siemens NY power plant false claims
In an echo of the VW emissions scandal, a Siemens power plant paid for entirely with public money was built on the basis of false claims about its energy saving potential.
Siemens claimed it would save Warren County NY at least $1.5m over 5 years. When a former Siemens employee questioned this, he was told he was not a team player.
A fraud investigation by the Warren County sheriff’s office found there was probable cause to charge a top county official with misconduct for his handling of the project, involving a cogeneration plant deal built by Siemens Building Technologies, based in Penn Plaza Manhattan.
Siemens is well known to be morally bankrupt. A 2008 investigation found Siemens’ culture of corruption extended far beyond the executive suite. As one investigator said “bribery was Siemens’ business model”. In fact, the company even had a handy accounting euphemism for its bribes: “nützliche Aufwendungen,” or “useful money”.
The Warren County investigation, which began in 2011 and ended earlier this year, determined that County Administrator Paul Dusek could be charged with official misconduct, a misdemeanor, for allegedly misinforming the county Board of Supervisors when he negotiated an energy-performance contract with Siemens in 2004, when he served as the county attorney, according to the sheriff’s department’s investigative file. The contract was tied to the cogeneration plant at the Westmount Healthcare Facility. As the county attorney at the time, Dusek was responsible for reviewing the contract and offering advice to the county board of supervisors on the agreement with Siemens.
However, Siemens intentionally overstated energy savings in the contract, and Dusek “repeatedly misrepresented his comprehension of Energy Performance Contracts to the board, other elected officials and the public,” according to a portion of the investigative report — about 150 pages — that was released by the sheriff’s department this week in response to a Freedom of Information Law request by the Post-Star newspaper in Glens Falls, which first reported the information.
In 2004, Warren County signed a contract with Siemens to finalize the building of the cogeneration facility designed to supply electricity to the Westmount Health Care Facility, the county’s former Social Services building and another annex. The cogeneration plant was installed at the county-owned Westmount nursing home in 2005. County officials celebrated the system as a money-saver at the time.
The equipment was fueled by natural gas purchased from National Grid, another energy company which has been exposed and fined for false accounting and overcharging consumers.
the equipment allowed the county to generate its own electricity for the nursing home and move the facility partially off-grid. The equipment also generates heat used to warm the air and water inside the building.
The initial coast to build was $3.5 million and the county was expected to generate a savings of $1.5 million over the next 15 years, according to the documents. However, the
