One of my friends is a founder of a company called Solyndra, nearby in Fremont, California... the east part of the SF Bay Area. They had applied for an available DOE funding program two years ago, and were just strung along all that time. To make a long story short...
... they put themselves on the radar once more, after Obama took office and Steven Chu was confirmed as Secretary of Energy. Lo and behold! They are now in the happy position of being the first recipients of the DOE's loan guarantee program which is part of the stimulus bill... w00t!
I am so happy about this for several reasons.
- This is my friend and he's worked incredibly hard to make this company thrive. He's another great example of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and this particular start-up was close to his heart as a contribution to helping renewable energy become better integrated in the US industry space.
- It's great to see 3,000 new jobs slated for creation with this move! Here in the Bay Area! This was one of their goals, to have manufacturing be here too, not just R&D. They have a big backlog of orders and need to get the new manufacturing space online ASAP, so I hope there is now going to be a minimum amount of additional bureaucratic hoop-jumping before that happens, Dog knows they've jumped through enough already.
- This is a big deal for the renewable energy industry, IMVHO... and we need that yesterday ;-)
Energy Secretary Steven Chu today offered a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, Inc. to support the company’s construction of a commercial-scale manufacturing plant for its proprietary cylindrical solar photovoltaic panels. The company expects to create thousands of new jobs in the U.S. while deploying its solar panels across the U.S. and around the world.
"This investment is part of President Obama’s aggressive strategy to put Americans back to work and reduce our dependence on foreign oil by developing clean, renewable sources of energy," Secretary Chu said. "We can create millions of new, good paying jobs that can’t be outsourced. Instead of relying on imports from other countries to meet our energy needs, we’ll rely on America’s innovation, America’s resources, and America’s workers."
Secretary Chu is moving aggressively to accelerate important Department of Energy investments that can create jobs and transform the way America uses and produces energy. This allows the Department of Energy to offer its first loan guarantee within the first two months of the Obama Administration. This loan guarantee will be supported through the President’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provides tens of billions of dollars in loan guarantee authority to build a new green energy economy.
I hope I don't get in trouble for sharing this here... my friend is uber-liberal but not too sure about the other folks ;-)
What the hell... it's Friday, let's celebrate a little something good in the midst of all the bad.
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