Obama DOE Warns: We Can’t Let China Dominate Solar Industry…
Then Immediately Awards $337 Million to Firm That Uses Chinese Solar Panels
Obama and solar panels. (Yahoo)
On September 14, 2011, Jonathan Silver, Executive Director Loan Programs Office, U.S. Department of Energy warned the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Committee on Energy and Commerce that we cannot allow China to dominate the solar industry. This came after US company Solyndra went bankrupt despite blowing $537 million in US stimulus cash.
That’s odd?
If the Department of Energy was so worried about China’s domination of the international solar industry then why did they award Chinese firm Suntech with a major US contract back in February.
The New York Times reported, via Free Republic:
Suntech, the Chinese solar giant, has won a contract to supply photovoltaic panels for a 150-megawatt project in Arizona, marking China’s entry into a lucrative United States power-plant market dominated by American companies.
The project is the first phase of a planned 700-megawatt project called Mesquite Solar to be built about 40 miles west of Phoenix and operated by Sempra Generation, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy. A California utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, will buy the electricity produced by the power plant’s first phase, called Mesquite Solar 1.
…While Chinese companies like Suntech, Yingli Green Energy and Trina Solar have grabbed a significant percentage of the American residential solar market — supplying nearly 40 percent of panels in California — they had shied away from huge utility-scale projects.
And this week the Obama Administration awarded a $337 million loan guarantee to Sempra Energy’s Mesquite Solar I project in Arizona, about 45 miles west of Phoenix.
That 150-megawatt facility will use solar panels made in Arizona by Suntech Power, which is based in China.
