"Ultimately, this is about creating American jobs, helping the environment and using rooftops for renewable energy," said Kelly Truman, Solyndra's vice president of marketing and business development.
The loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy comes at a rough time for green tech. Although still the darling of venture capitalists, green startups have suffered since the credit crisis hit last year. Those ready to start mass producing their products have struggled to find financing to build factories or expand operations.
"To get this kind of financing today from a public bank would be a challenge," Truman said. "To have this government opportunity is great."
The loan guarantee is the first ever offered by a federal program that was created in 2005 to finance alternative energy but became notorious for its lack of progress.
Solyndra applied for the money in 2006. But the program didn't receive funding until 2007, and even then, critics said its staff was too small to handle the applications.
Soon after taking office in January, Energy Secretary Steven Chu made speeding up the loan program a top priority. President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package included an additional $6 billion in loan guarantees for renewable power projects, and Chu promised to start issuing loans within months.
"The 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," Chu said Friday, in a prepared statement.
Although Solyndra applied for the loan under the 2005 program, the funding will come from the stimulus package, said Stephanie Mueller, press secretary for the Department of Energy.
The credit crisis has already claimed casualties in the alternative energy industry. On Thursday, another East Bay solar company - OptiSolar of Hayward - reported that it had stopped making solar panels and was cutting most of its staff. Like Solyndra, OptiSolar had applied for a federal loan guarantee under the 2005 program, although OptiSolar applied only February.
"The loans are critical," said Ron Pernick, co-founder of the Clean Edge research firm, which covers the green-tech industry. "There's lots of projects ready to go, but no one's really pulling the trigger."
Solyndra already has a factory in Fremont cranking out the company's unusual solar panels, which aren't really panels at all. Instead, they are slender glass tubes with curved solar cells wrapped around the inside. Placed flat on open, rooftop racks, they can absorb light bouncing off the roof.
The loan will cover 73 percent of Solyndra's costs for building its second factory, about a quarter mile from the first. Once complete, the facility will employ about 1,000 people and make enough solar equipment each year to generate about 500 megawatts of electricity, about the same as a mid-size fossil fuel power plant.
This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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