Funding for G2V Tech, A North TX Solar Company

Over eleven hundred semiconductor workers, engineers, and support staff were laid off when the silicon manufacturing plant, STMicroelectronics closed its site in Carrollton,TX and went overseas in this past year.

The last several dozen people in the company put together several state and federal grant and loan applications to convert this silicon manufacturing site to a silicon solar manufacturing company (G2V website: www.G2vtech.com ) complete with solar education, and certificate and degree programs, to not only retrain and hire back all 1100 people, but provide new Green Economy employable skills and education for other laid off workers and young people in the Dallas Fort Worth area.

The state grant was essential for the initial cost of the project - to buy the plant and set up the retraining with local colleges, and to apply for the Federal low interest loans. A group of thirty or forty scientist and engineers have been working on this business plan for the past 4 months.

In spite of a positive initial response from the TX state government, it seems that the state grant is not coming through. We requested 30 - 40 million dollars. There is enough money in the state budget allocation for the State Enterprise Development Fund to support this project, however the funding is basically at the discretion of TX Governor Perry (although the lieutenant governor and secretary of state also must sign their approval, if Governor Perry agrees, the other approvals are virtually assured.) As of now it seems that the application for the grant has been shelved indefinitely.

It should be noted that the cost of one year of state unemployment benefits for those laid off workers would be roughly equal to the grant in question to pay for the solar manufacturing facility - costing the state of TX and it's taxpayers nothing for this great benefit.