By Jim Scarantino on June 1, 2010

Sunny Promises Eclipsed by Reality of No Money

The huge new solar plant was going to be “fast-tracked.”  The City of Rio Rancho would cobble funds from dozens of projects to build roads and sewers to serve a million square-foot plant that would employ 1,500.  Eventually 3,000 people around the state would be employed by this new leader in the solar industry, Green2v.  Politicians rushed to share in the limelight.  Governor Bill Richardson, U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman, Rio Rancho Mayor Tom Swisstack gathered before the cameras to herald the coming of thousands of “green jobs” and the next great thing in alternative energy.

It’s all looking more and more like one huge spin job that suckered in some of the state’s most prominent politicians.  The formula required gullibility.  They provided it.  What’s missing is real money.  And the lack of real money–despite contrary representations from Green2v and its associates–has canceled out the giddiness politicians displayed only weeks ago.

Big Talk, Bigger Promises

Other solar dreamers have failed to turn New Mexico into Governor Richardson’s dream of a “Solar Valley” that could rival California’s “Silicon Valley.”  They, too, inspired giddiness with their promises of thousands of high-paying high-tech jobs.  But they didn’t come with their own money and couldn’t get the financing needed to move beyond talking about what they would do.

Green2v was going to be different.  It supposedly had the money, a lot of money.  It had more money than any other solar start-up had been able to attract anywhere in the United States.  Half a billion dollars, to be exact, sitting in a bank ready to be invested through industrial revenue bonds to be issued by the City of Rio Rancho.  Green2v had a letter of credit to prove up its staggering financial backing.

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