WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, under pressure to spur job growth, said yesterday two solar energy companies will get nearly $2 billion in US loan guarantees to create as many as 5,000 green jobs.
In his weekly radio and Web address, Obama coupled his announcement with an acknowledgment that efforts to recover from the recession are slow a day after the Labor Department reported that private hiring in June rose by 83,000.
“It’s going to take months, even years, to dig our way out and it’s going to require an all-hands-on-deck effort,” he said.
All told, 5,000 jobs are expected to be created through use of $1.85 billion in money taken from the $787 billion economic stimulus that Obama pushed through the US Congress in early 2009 over the strenuous objections of Republicans.
Obama announced the Energy Department will award $1.45 billion in loan guarantees to Abengoa Solar Inc to help it build Solona, one of the largest solar generation plants in the world near Gila Bend, Arizona.
Abengoa Solar, headquartered in Lakewood, Colorado, is a unit of Spanish renewable energy and engineering company Abengoa SA . In the short term, construction will create some 1,600 jobs in Arizona.
