XeroCoat Secures $5 million in Funding for Coating System and Materials Exports
Bank Funds Green Projects
The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2010
By Mara Lemos Stein
The Export-Import Bank of the U.S. is doing its bit to help the blossoming green energy industry capture some global market share, meeting a growing demand for export financing to companies in the sector.
The Export-Import Bank has a target to provide $250 million in financing for renewable energy exports in the fiscal year started Oct. 1, 2009, its largest ever for the sector, and it is moving fast toward that goal, said Fred Hochberg, Export-Import Bank chairman and president.
By the end of the first fiscal 2010 quarter, the bank had provided $108 million in financing, more than the entire volume of export financing for renewable energy in fiscal 2009, when $100 million in financing was provided and solar power technology topped the list of projects.
"We're encouraging these companies to export because, in the long-term it would be better to have a global footprint, but in the short-term the market will be domestic," Mr. Hochberg said. "There's a huge demand here for renewable energy technology, we have all the sales we can handle right here in the U.S."
The bulk of Export-Import Bank's renewable energy funding in fiscal 2010 so far has gone to Clipper Windpower Inc., which secured an $80.7 million loan from the bank in November to ship 27, 2.5-megawatt wind turbines to a project in Mexico.
The project is the first export deal for Clipper, Carpinteria, Calif., and Export-Import Bank's first funding of a wind-power project.
"The $250 million is a number I'd be very happy with for the year," said Mr. Hochberg, who was named to the top job at the export credit agency in April 2009.
Export-Import Bank has a "good backlog of projects" that it is reviewing, but they aren't usually as large as Clipper's.
Like Clipper's export financing, the projects enjoy repayment terms of up to 18 years that Export-Import Bank can offer thanks to an agreement with countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for exports of renewable energy, water and nuclear power projects.
The typical length of wind project financing has declined as credit has became scarce since late 2008, to about seven years.
Solar power projects have been the main recipients of Export-Import Bank's funding.
Some other projects funded recently were Xerocoat Inc., which secured a $5 million loan for exports of coating and cover glass for photovoltaic projects in Germany, and Suniva Inc.'s export of its solar cells to India, Mr. Hochberg said.
Besides the global trend of seeking out environmentally friendlier sources of power, the advance in renewable energy technology is helping establish exports from U.S. companies as they get more competitive, he said. "To the extent that we help make American companies more profitable, because with volume production they are able to bring down costs and make their product more competitive . . . we fit into the big picture," Mr. Hochberg said.
The $250 million funding facility for renewable energy exports is part of the bank's "carbon policy," which aims to support technologies and projects that reduce carbon-dioxide emissions in the production of energy.
Export-Import Bank's efforts to help boost renewable energy exports predate the current administration, though, and go back to 2007, when it created its Office of Renewable Energy and Environmental Exports to provide loans and financing for companies in the solar, wind and geothermal sectors and for other sources of green power.
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