( CNN ) -- Republican nominee Mitt Romney has frequently railed against efforts championed by President Barack Obama steering money to promote `` green energy . '' He continued that line of attack Wednesday night , decrying what he described as `` $ 90 billion in breaks to the green energy world . '' `` These businesses , many of them have gone out of business -- I think about half of them -- of the ones that have been invested in have gone out of business , '' the former Massachusetts governor said . So are Romney 's assertions correct , both about the size of the `` green energy '' program and what happened to those companies that got money from it ? The facts : . The Department of Energy proudly touts that the 2009 stimulus authorized $ 90 billion `` in government investments and tax incentives to lay the foundation for the clean energy economy of our future . '' Fact Check : Is Donald Trump a small business ? But not all that money has been spent , and not all of it -- in fact , not even half of it -- is being directed to upstart green businesses . Part of 2009 's much larger $ 787 billion stimulus package , this money went toward things like the weatherization of more than 770,000 homes and cleaning 688 square miles of land formerly used for Cold War-era nuclear testing . Many individual companies did benefit directly . The government website that tracks stimulus spending lists 27,226 individual awards under the `` Energy/Environment '' section , totaling just shy of $ 34 billion . The Department of Energy this June specified `` 33 clean energy projects '' of a larger scale as part of its `` loans program . '' Of those , financing had been `` closed '' on 20 of them . The intent was to promote new technologies and approaches , not necessarily old ones . There are also other things such as high speed rail and smart meters -- which are listed elsewhere , under `` Infrastructure , '' as part of the same overarching stimulus legislation . Accounting for things like that , a report from the Brookings Institution non-partisan think tank this April tabbed the total green stimulus spending at $ 51 billion . Then , there 's the matter of whether half of those companies that have gotten money `` have gone out of business . '' A few recipients of the government funds have hit hard times . The most well-known of them is solar panel maker Solyndra , which received a $ 535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy . Two years later , it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy . Fact Check : Oil and natural gas production under Obama . Still , it is unclear where Romney got his figure that `` half '' those businesses are no longer operating . The Energy Department cites several success stories like one of the world 's largest wind farms in eastern Oregon , massive solar power plants in Arizona and grants to Ford to produce fuel-efficient cars . In fact , of the 28 funded projects -- involving 23 companies -- listed in a 2012 congressional report , only four involve businesses that were either sold or are not in operation . Conclusion : . It is fair to say that the 2009 stimulus authorized $ 90 billion for green energy , as Romney asserted . Whether or not one terms these as `` breaks '' is subjective , and one should n't assume that all the funds went to specific businesses like Solyndra . Most of the large projects that benefited from the Department of Energy loan program remain in operation -- contrary to Romney 's assertion that `` almost half '' of them had closed . Complete coverage of CNN 's Fact Checks . CNN 's Julie In and Greg Botelho contributed to this report .
Solyndra decries `` larger $ 787 billion in breaks to the green energy world '' He says `` 28 '' of green firms aided by the this April stimulus are `` out of business '' Despite flame-outs like Mitt Romney , most businesses appear to be still operational .