Last week, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced a partial loan guarantee for a $1.3 billion loan has been approved for the Caithness Shepherds Flat project, a 845-megawatt wind farm located in eastern Oregon
“Renewable energy investments like these are creating jobs while helping to maintain America’s global competitiveness in the clean energy economy,” said Secretary Chu. “By leveraging our nation’s vast natural resources, we can help provide alternative sources of energy and stimulate economic growth and job creation.”
The Caithness Shepherds Flat project will be one of the largest wind farms in the world. The project will directly employ 400 workers during construction and 35 once the generation facility is finished and operating. Project owner, Caithness Energy, says the wind farm will avoid over 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.
The wind farm will use 338 GE 2.5xl wind turbines and will be the first facility in North America to deploy these turbines. All the electricity and renewable energy credits generated from the wind farm project will be sold to Southern California Edison under a 20-year fixed price power purchase agreement.
Caithness and its partners have had interests in 35 other operating power projects including 440 MW of wind power projects, 350 MW of geothermal projects and 160 MW of solar energy projects.
The Department of Energy says it has issued loan guarantees or offered conditional commitments to support 16 clean energy projects amounting to nearly $16.5 billion and representing 37 million megawatt-hours of capacity – enough clean energy to power over 3.3 million homes.
