AP photo: solar-panels
While still reeling from the devastating news that New United Motor Manufacturing, one of the largest employers in the Bay Area, intends to shut its doors in March of 2010, local officials and residents have been given a bit of positive news. Solyndra, a manufacturer of solar-panels, has broken gound on a new $733 million plant in Fremont, CA. The new plant will represent Solyndra’s second factory and is intended to employ about 2,000 people when all is said and done.
The groundbreaking was physically attended by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and via satellite by Vice President Joe Biden. The Vice President stated that the new plant will mark the beginning of $30 billion in federal loan guarantees for clean-tech companies. He also assured that “these jobs are going to be permanent jobs. These are jobs that won’t be exported.”
Back in March Solyndra, who has made a name for themselves designing and manufacturing photovoltaic systems for the commercial rooftop market, announced that they were the first company to receive an offer for a Department of Energy loan guarantee under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Now Solyndra is poised to begin construction with their $535 million loan guarantee in hand, ready to provide some of the green collar jobs that have been much discussed in the media in recent years but slow to materialize. The loan is expected to provide debt financing for about 73% of the project costs for the 1 million square foot factory.
And that’s not all: Solyndra has made it clear that the clean tech firm is already considering building a third 2 million square foot factory. Ben Bierman, Vice President of Solyndra, told reporters that the NUMMI site may be a good fit for the company’s needs, but at this point it’s too soon to say for sure. “We would have to look at it carefully. But we wouldn’t know until we got in there.” Solyndra is currently located only 3 miles from the NUMMI auto plant.
The company estimates that their second plant will have a manufacturing capacity of 500 megawatts per year. With that, the plant should be able to produce solar panels sufficient to generate energy for 24,000 homes each year. Hopes are that over the life of the project, the factory will generate enough clean renewable energy to avoid 300 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Local officials are hoping that Solyndra’s future success will make the case to other clean tech companies that the Bay Area is not just a place for businesses to design and market their green products, but to manufacture them as well.
Comments
Borrow taxpayer money and build it but if it does not sell any products how long will we continue to pour money down these black holes. All of this is being done on borrowed taxpayer money instead of investment bankers. What does that tell you about this? How much debt and printing of money can the taxpayers bear? If these were economically viable products the free market would have been in the market. The only reason this exists is the misplaced spending of our government. When the funds run out these plants will close or need more massive injections of taxper funds.
I would not worry about them selling product. Solyndra has a $2 billion backlog of orders! See www.solyndra.com/News/Press-Release-070709. They will be selling for a long time.
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