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DOE offers $2 billion loan for solar thermal projects
- 12 years ago (2011-06-15)
- David Flin
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced almost $2 billion in conditional commitments for loan guarantees for two solar thermal projects.
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The first project is the Mojave Solar Project, a 250 MW solar farm to be built by Abengoa Solar in San Bernadino County, California. The DOE is offering a $1.2 billion conditional commitment for a loan guarantee. The second project is the Genesis Solar Project, to be built by NextEra Energy in Riverside County, California. The DOE is offering a conditional commitment for a $681.6 million loan guarantee for this project. Abengoa and NextEra say these projects will provide a total of 1630 construction jobs, and 120 jobs when the solar projects are operating.
Loan guarantees are assurances that the government will pay back a loan if a company defaults on it, and this often enables companies to get loans with better rates.
In May, Jonathan Silver, in charge of the DOE’s loan guarantee programme, said his staff had narrowed down a list of projects that were still eligible for loan guarantees, and had also notified applicants whose projects weren’t good enough or far enough along in the process to be considered for the loan guarantees.
The loan guarantee programme started as part of the 2009 stimulus package that aimed to boost job creation and clean power generation. Solar projects have been major recipients of DOE loan guarantees. The DOE awarded a loan guarantee to Fotowatio Renewable Ventures to build a 20 MW solar photovoltaic project near Las Vegas; Abengoa has already received a $1.45 billion loan guarantee for its solar thermal Solana project in Arizona; and BrightSource Energy received a $1.6 billion loan guarantee for its Ivanpah project in California.