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"Over the weekend, President Obama announced the Department of Energy would be giving almost $2 billion in conditional funding to two solar energy companies, Abengoa Solar and Abound Solar Manufacturing.\nMoney will come from the $863 billion economic stimulus package. Projects funded by this move are expected to create more than 5,000 construction and permanent jobs.\nOne of these initiatives is the  Solana project, which Abengoa says will be the largest concentrating solar power plant in the world when it's completed. The Arizona-based plant will produce enough energy to power 70,000 households and will save the environment from about 475,000 tons of CO2 each year. Most of the development and permitting for Solana is already complete, and the project has a green light from the Department of Energy (DOE), as well.\n\"These are just two of the many clean energy investments in the Recovery Act,\" the President said. \"Already, I\u2019ve seen the payoff from these investments. I\u2019ve seen once-shuttered factories humming with new workers who are building solar panels and wind turbines; rolling up their sleeves to help America win the race for the clean energy economy.\"\nHere's the entirety of President Obama's address on YouTube:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSolar power has become an increasingly interesting alternative for providing energy for all kinds of purposes, from our homes to our gadgets, from airplanes to spaceships.\nGreen and clean tech in general have been surfacing as exciting areas of investment recently; Google recently invested $38 million in wind farms.\nWhat do you think: Is clean energy a topic that interests you? Do you think more people should be investing in and working on greener sources of power? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.\n[img credit Rusty Russ]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/07/05/obama-solar-energy/>