Posted by Linda H on 6:50:00 AM
MidAmerican Energy Holdings, a subsidiary of Mr Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway
investment company, has struck a deal with SunPower to acquire and build two
projects in California’s Antelope Valley. The deal, which will see MidAmerican pay between $2bn to $2.5bn, marks the
third time in little over a year that Mr Buffett has ploughed cash into
solar energy.
Work on the projects will begin within the next few months and construction is
expected to be completed by the end of 2015.
“Customers, investors and banks see this as a stamp of approval on SunPower,”
SunPower’s president and chief executive, Tom Werner, said.
“It’s a huge deal for us, roughly the size of our company.”
SunPower, based in San Jose, California, has a market value of $732 million.
The two projects acquired by MidAmerican will have a combined capacity of 579
megawatts (MW), creating the largest solar photovoltaic power development in
the world.
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Posted by Linda H on 6:15:00 AM
WASHINGTON -- As part of President Obama’s
all-of-the-above strategy to expand domestic energy production,
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced the release of the
Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the McCoy Solar Energy
Project, a proposed 750-megawatt facility in Riverside County that would
be one of the largest solar energy projects on public lands in the
California desert.
If approved, the project will join 34 renewable energy projects that
the Administration has green-lighted for construction on public lands
since 2009. Together, the projects have the potential to produce
approximately 10,400 megawatts of energy – or enough to power
approximately 3.4 million homes – and exceed President Obama’s goal of
authorizing 10,000 megawatts of utility-scale renewably energy on public
lands by 2013. Prior to 2009, there had been zero solar energy projects
authorized on public lands.
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