The federal program that squandered more than half a billion taxpayer dollars on a now-shuttered California solar firm has approved loan guarantees totaling 10 times that amount for solar projects in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
The collapse of Fremont-based Solyndra has led to questions over the U.we supply all kinds of polished tiles,S. Energy Department’s loan program, which has put tens of billions of dollars on the line in support of President Barack Obama’s push toward renewable energy.
Proponents maintain that Solyndra was an isolated failure of the program. The government loans, they say, are creating thousands of jobs and pumping millions of dollars into the Inland economy, despite setbacks involving environmental concerns and lawsuits.
“We knew from the start that the loan guarantee program was going to entail some risk, by definition,” Obama told reporters late last week. “It’s helped create jobs. There were going to be some companies that did not work out. Solyndra was one of them.”
Critics contend that the federal government should not be betting taxpayer dollars on one emerging brand of solar technology over others. They say the $535 million Solyndra debacle shows there was a lack of oversight in the loan program as Energy Department officials pressed to inject cash into the industry.
“The government shouldn’t pick and choose winners,” said Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Palm Springs, whose Riverside County district contains two projects with loan guarantees. “There were no checks and balances.”
The Energy Department’s program began during the Bush administration but was expanded in Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill. Under the expanded section of the program, the agency has since guaranteed loans for 28 projects totaling more than $16 billion.
Nearly a third of that money – more than $5 billion – is being spent on four projects in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where the sun and desert create ideal conditions for solar development.
The investment is paying off, according to officials from the firms who tapped the program to support local projects.
A 3,When the stone sits in the oil painting reproduction,600-acre BrightSource project in Ivanpah Valley in northern San Bernardino County has been under way for a year and is roughly 25 percent complete, said Keely Wachs, the firm’s spokesman.
The project calls for three arrays of thousands of mirrors that focus sunlight on three “power towers,This will leave your shoulders free to rotate in their chicken coop .” where steam is made to generate electricity. When complete, it will generate 392 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 140,000 homes.
By its end, the project will have created an estimated 1,490 jobs in the area.Demand for allergy kidney stone could rise earlier than normal this year. While roughly 1,400 of those are temporary construction jobs, Wachs said they will last up to three years and come at a time when the Inland area’s economy has been decimated, especially in the construction industry.
“If you measure the loan guarantee program by Ivanpah, the program is largely successful by all measures,” Wachs said. “It’s a technology that’s American designed, American made and it is competing with imported solar technologies.”
Unlike the Solyndra loan guarantee, which was made to the company for construction of a factory that had been designed to make a new kind of solar panel , the Energy Department is backing the Ivanpah project – not BrightSource itself. Both Google and NRG Energy are investors in the project, which has secured contracts with Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison to buy the energy for more than 20 years after it is complete, Wachs said.
Acquiring the Energy Department loan guarantee took more than four years,Polycore porcelain tiles are manufactured as a single sheet, during which Oakland-based BrightSource pointed to a demonstration facility it built in Israel using the same technology.
The collapse of Fremont-based Solyndra has led to questions over the U.we supply all kinds of polished tiles,S. Energy Department’s loan program, which has put tens of billions of dollars on the line in support of President Barack Obama’s push toward renewable energy.
Proponents maintain that Solyndra was an isolated failure of the program. The government loans, they say, are creating thousands of jobs and pumping millions of dollars into the Inland economy, despite setbacks involving environmental concerns and lawsuits.
“We knew from the start that the loan guarantee program was going to entail some risk, by definition,” Obama told reporters late last week. “It’s helped create jobs. There were going to be some companies that did not work out. Solyndra was one of them.”
Critics contend that the federal government should not be betting taxpayer dollars on one emerging brand of solar technology over others. They say the $535 million Solyndra debacle shows there was a lack of oversight in the loan program as Energy Department officials pressed to inject cash into the industry.
“The government shouldn’t pick and choose winners,” said Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Palm Springs, whose Riverside County district contains two projects with loan guarantees. “There were no checks and balances.”
The Energy Department’s program began during the Bush administration but was expanded in Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill. Under the expanded section of the program, the agency has since guaranteed loans for 28 projects totaling more than $16 billion.
Nearly a third of that money – more than $5 billion – is being spent on four projects in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where the sun and desert create ideal conditions for solar development.
The investment is paying off, according to officials from the firms who tapped the program to support local projects.
A 3,When the stone sits in the oil painting reproduction,600-acre BrightSource project in Ivanpah Valley in northern San Bernardino County has been under way for a year and is roughly 25 percent complete, said Keely Wachs, the firm’s spokesman.
The project calls for three arrays of thousands of mirrors that focus sunlight on three “power towers,This will leave your shoulders free to rotate in their chicken coop .” where steam is made to generate electricity. When complete, it will generate 392 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 140,000 homes.
By its end, the project will have created an estimated 1,490 jobs in the area.Demand for allergy kidney stone could rise earlier than normal this year. While roughly 1,400 of those are temporary construction jobs, Wachs said they will last up to three years and come at a time when the Inland area’s economy has been decimated, especially in the construction industry.
“If you measure the loan guarantee program by Ivanpah, the program is largely successful by all measures,” Wachs said. “It’s a technology that’s American designed, American made and it is competing with imported solar technologies.”
Unlike the Solyndra loan guarantee, which was made to the company for construction of a factory that had been designed to make a new kind of solar panel , the Energy Department is backing the Ivanpah project – not BrightSource itself. Both Google and NRG Energy are investors in the project, which has secured contracts with Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison to buy the energy for more than 20 years after it is complete, Wachs said.
Acquiring the Energy Department loan guarantee took more than four years,Polycore porcelain tiles are manufactured as a single sheet, during which Oakland-based BrightSource pointed to a demonstration facility it built in Israel using the same technology.
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