Friday, February 26, 2010

Renewable energy loan now available for farmers

The Farm Credit Corporation Energy Loan (FCC Energy Loan) is designed to assist producers and agribusiness owners who want to make the move towards producing their own renewable energy.

Available March 1, 2010 the FCC Energy Loan will help producers and agribusiness operators purchase and install on-farm energy sources like biogas, geo-thermal, wind or solar power.

The FCC Energy Loan offers an interest term of up to five years at variable or fixed rates and with monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual payments available.

This is yet another reason for farmers to start capitalizing on the exceptional energy resource in Saskatchewan and across Canada.

More information here: http://www.fcc-fac.ca/en/AboutUs/Media/news20100222_e.asp

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Solar in Malta

Having just arrived back from Malta, this M&A transaction was particularly interesting whereby California-based SunPower acquired Malta-based SunRay for $277 million USD:

http://investors.sunpowercorp.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=444349

Malta is a small island but being only 295 kilometers East of Tunisia has a large concentration of solar development companies due to the excellent solar resource and utilization in the country.

The wind regime is also very good and there was some talk about offshore potential but as far as I could tell no developer had yet made moves to develop - I assume it is only a matter of time...