Governor Celebrates Renewable Energy Facility Groundbreaking

MR. BAR-LEV:

Israel Kroizer, where are you? Israel Kroizer, our COO. (Applause) John Woolard, our CEO. (Applause) Governor Schwarzenegger, of the greatest state in the country, California. (Applause) And the best Secretary of Interior we have had in generations, Secretary Salazar. (Applause)

What a great day. I've got a lot of family members here. My son is filming this; my father is here in spirit.

I'm sorry, I forgot two people. I'm nervous. Ian Copeland from Bechtel. (Applause) And Bob Balgenorth from the trade unions. (Applause) Let's hope I don't make any other mistakes.

This is a glorious day in all of our lives, a very special day. A sunny day -- the clouds are going to end up getting swept away and the air is sweet and isn't that why we're all here?

We at BrightSource would like to graciously welcome our esteemed guests, Governor Schwarzenegger; Secretary Salazar; David Crane, president and CEO of NRG; John Woolard, our CEO; Israel Kroizer, the Chief Operating Officer of Bright Source; Ian Copeland, president of Renewable Energy for Bechtel; and Bob Balgenorth, president of the California Construction and Building Trades Council. We also want to recognize in the audience the many federal, California and San Bernardino County officials who have made this day possible.

Governor, Mr. Secretary, your staff and your administration, the Department of Energy -- and we've got folks here from Sandia, folks from NREL, we've got folks here from the California Energy Commission, the CPUC, Fish and Game, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, BLM -- have pulled together in an extraordinary way to get us here. We've got Commissioner Spitzer from the FERC, we've got Assemblyman Skinner from the California Assembly. All of you folks have made this day possible.

We'd like to also welcome in the audience our generous partners in this great, important and transformative journey, our investors, our partners, PG&E and Southern California Edison, the most progressive utilities in the United States.

All the folks from Bechtel who are going to be laboring very, very hard for the next couple of years -- sorry. Our friends and there are many of you here from the State Building and Construction Trades Council, our friends from Nevada -- and especially from MGM Resort, Bob Swadkins in particular, who graciously offered this location to hold today's event -- I want to welcome many, many folks who have been instrumental here. I don't see Michael Picker. Are you here? Fantastic. And Steve Black, Manal, thank you very much for being here. I hope I haven't forgotten anyone.

Most of all, we'd like to welcome the BrightSource family who made this possible and for whom we do this, including our children, our spouses, our supportive friends. A round of applause for putting up with us for the last years. (Applause) Thanks.

And in that group, let me especially recognize the 200 and growing, employees of BrightSource who have worked relentlessly, tirelessly, focused beyond belief. Congratulations to you for the moon shot that got us here and the moon shot that's going to propel us from this point forward. (Applause)

Four years ago there were perhaps 10 of us, mostly the old-timers from the Luz days and one optimistic, brilliant, can-do leader who never takes his eyes off the prize, John Woolard. (Applause)

Let me take one minute to remind us all of how visions like this begin. Our vision began almost 30 years ago when our patriarch and founder, Arnold Goldman, founded Luz. Let me recognize Arnold Goldman right now -- stand up, please, Arnold -- for your wisdom and your determination. (Applause)

Luz was the first and until recently the only, company in the world to build large-scale solar projects. We built, in a short time, 354 megawatts. Those projects are just down the road to the west, still operating beautifully after all these years. And after all, the source of our energy is in infinite; it's only the hardware that has to be occasionally refreshed.

Luz is a name we should all remember from Genesis. It is a location in the Judean hills where young Jacob -- immature, insecure, inexperienced, still gathering lumps of coal to heat the family's hut and well before he becomes the father of the 12 sons and tribes of Israel -- spends the night escaping his jealous brother Esau. And during the night, if you all remember the story, he dreams of a ladder extending from the earth to the heavens with angels ascending and descending. Jacob encounters the infinite power of the heavens and is reminded that, if he has faith in that infinite power, all will be well.

Our Arnold realized that the company Luz would be the means of implementing Jacob's dream. Luz would be the connection between the sun of the heavens and the land of the earth. You might say that Luz was the first double bottom-line investment.

And so it will be. If we will it, it is no dream. Like Jacob, we stand at a moment of great awe and revelation. This is our moment of encounter, of possibility, a moment of great meaning and importance for our country, our state, our community, our family that is here and our children to come and their children to come.

This is a beginning, folks. This is the Apollo Project, the lift off -- the lift off that will lay the seeds for the future, an energy future that creates jobs here in our community, an energy future we control, not one controlled by foreign countries. This is the dawn of that future and we are the pioneers.

And now I'd like to begin today's program by introducing someone that you all know well and without whom none of this would be possible, John Woolard, BrightSource Energy's president and our CEO. Come on up here, John. (Applause)

MR. WOOLARD:

Thanks, Joshua. It's a lot warmer up here than it is in the tent and I'm actually wondering if we could divert a heliostat to cover the crowd. That might actually help with some of the cold temperature there.

Not many people know that Joshua was actually the first of many to leave a job inside of a Fortune 500 company with a nice pension to take a chance with the group that started it -- five, 10, 15 and has now moved up to 200. And that whole team at BrightSource is really who I have to thank for the ability to be here at this groundbreaking.

But I'd first also like to take an extra thanks to Governor Schwarzenegger and Secretary Salazar, because between the two of you and Michael Picker and the people underneath you and Steve Black, you've mobilized two agencies, the California Energy Commission and the Bureau of Land Management, to get us to where we are today, so we all owe you a very big round of applause and thank you. (Applause) And it wasn't easy.

I also want to thank the -- we have representatives here from the DOE, the PUC, the CEC. We've just got such a broad group of constituents that have helped us along the way and that have all shared that common vision of how we start to build towards a future that can actually have renewable power, renewable energy and start to decarbonizes the energy supply at a scale that can be actually meaningful.

And I want to thank also -- we'll hear from him later -- but David Crane and the team at NRG who are here, because David and his vision and his courage allow us to actually move forward. And we've got funding on the debt side from the Department of Energy but we also have the equity commitment from David and others that allow this project to move forward.

One last moment -- I want to re-emphasize Arnold Goldman's role in this. I knew there was risk of some significant overlap with Joshua and I but I think none of us would be here today without Arnold Goldman. What the Luz team did in the '80s and then what Arnold did in having the vision in 2003 and '04, to bring together a group of people again and to change and to take -- between Arnold and Israel Kroizer and the team in Israel -- to take their prior design and throw it away and say that's not the best way to do this. We've learned a lot building power plants back in the '80s but there's a better way to do it now, there's a smarter way to do it now -- steam turbines and things have become more efficient. And the courage to take -- I thought when the fathers or the grandfathers of the troth abandoned their own baby, it told me a lot, that this was a team that not only could deliver, because they've done that but also had the courage to move forward as the world was moving forward. So thank you, Arnold, again. We're all here because of you. (Applause)

A few facts about Ivanpah, just to put it in perspective: Ivanpah is now the world's largest solar plant under construction. And it takes a lot to get a solar plant under construction. You've got to have transmission, you've got to have permits, you've got to have investors, you've got to have an EPC contractor -- we're honored to have Bechtel here as our EPC contractor. They're the world's best and most capable and largest engineering procurement and construction firm that there is.

When it's completed, Ivanpah will double the amount of solar thermal produced in the world and interestingly, Israel, Arnold and the team are responsible for about 80 percent of that first piece -- sorry, in the U.S. -- and this will double that at Ivanpah.

It will also double the amount of solar produced last year by every other company that was installed. So you take every solar company that installed a plant last year and we will double that. We will be that equivalent in size and scale with one plant. (Applause)

And, I think equally important, there's a lot of talk about the U.S. and competiveness and China. And Ivanpah alone, one plant, one facility, is two times larger than all of the solar that came in from China that was installed last year -- so one plant, one facility, bigger than all of the solar that came in from China last year. (Applause)

It's demonstrating something that I think is fundamentally important and that is that America can actually take the upper hand here, we can lead, we can innovate and we're the best at it. And I think that this is a testimony to that.

And to those who say that some of these industries are being dominated overseas, I say the race has just begun and this is the beginning of a very long process and it will be very exciting to watch the way this pans out. More to come on that.

This project, Ivanpah, will have a dramatic effect on helping us meet our state's clean energy and our climate change goals and in less than two years we'll be producing some of the most reliable and the lowest carbon-content power anywhere in the country.

Ivanpah is also a real testimony to how you can do environmentally responsible design and this is something that I took very seriously from the very beginning. Not all solar plants are created the same; some use a lot of water, they use wet cooling. We immediately went -- and a lot goes to Israel Kroizer -- we went right to dry cooling from the beginning, because it was the right thing to do and the right way to do it. And it has been a tremendous advantage for us but it also helps us show that you can produce solar power with 3, 4 percent of the water that wet-cool designs are using. And water, as anybody knows, is going to be very important in the desert in the years to come.

We're also very low-impact on the land. So the heliostats that you see behind us, we don't grade the land, we don't disturb the land. We actually plant them -- it's almost like planting trees. When we're putting the heliostats in we can put in the posts in about -- it depends, there's a little debate -- three to five minutes. It takes about -- a minute means a lot with Bechtel. (Laughter)

Another way to think about it, it takes about three to four hours to fully -- man hours -- to fully install a heliostat. And to put that in perspective -- and a heliostat is a fancy name for the device behind me with two mirrors -- that powers a home. So as we build this, we're going to put 173 heliostats out on that site and that means basically every five hours there's another home that gets powered. Another heliostat, another house, another heliostat another house. So we have the ability to actually implement this at a scale and a pace that has never been done before. And that's a lot of what I think is the most exciting; we do it in a very environmentally responsible manner.

Today you're also going to hear from other very important speakers that have helped set the tone and helped set the stage and make this possible, the first utility project in decades, the first large utility-scale project in decades to be built in California. We'll start construction today. It's a momentous event.

But I also want to make sure people understand that this is only one of many that are going to follow, so right now Ivanpah is the first of many power plants that BrightSource and our partners will build over the next few years. We actually have signed contracts from Southern California Edison and PG&E for 2.6 gigawatts of power plants. That's a very big number. For people who don't think in gigawatts, that's the size of two nuclear facilities. And that's just the beginning. And so we'll build 11 more power plants between now and 2016 and our partners, our ecosystem of partners -- everybody from Bechtel to BLM to the state of California -- we look forward to doing this with everybody as we move forward.

I want to say one more note on scale and then I want to move forward in the program. When we think about what has to get built to deliver, to decarbonize our power supply, it's a daunting number. So Ivanpah is big, as we know; we've talked about it being as big as all the solar in the U.S. last year. But it's just a start. And we have to build the equivalent of two Ivanpahs every week in this country for the next 40 years in order to be able to decarbonizes the power supply and to get to 450 parts per million. (Applause)

That's a big number. So you take two Ivanpahs -- and it's not all going to be solar-thermal; it's going to be a combination of wind, photovoltaic, solar-thermal, nuclear. We've got a very, very daunting task in front of us. But I just want to make sure -- this is the beginning and this is the first step. But Jim, Ian and your team, I hope you're ready to be building at the scale of two Ivanpahs a week at some point in time.

I now have the honor of introducing our first speaker and without him none of this would be possible. This is a man who, as I'm sure a lot of people say, needs no introduction and I just want to make a couple of comments.

Governor Schwarzenegger, what you did with AB 32 and bringing that into law was one of the most fundamental and bold initiatives we've seen in this country. That put us on the same footing as the rest of the world with the debate around climate change and decarbonizing the power supply and without that I don't think any of this dialogue would be possible. I think that's one of the most important and fundamental pieces of legislation that has happened.

And if you look back, California has led the way in energy and in efficiency for decades. You trace the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, you can trace all the great (Inaudible) back to California. And I think when we look back, just as we look back now to the way our water and air legislation moved from California into the federal community, I think that AB 32 -- really, we'll look back in a decade or two and say that was the beginning of what, hopefully, is going to be a more important national debate.

But California has done a great job and Governor, you've been fantastic in leading the way. (Applause)

So without further ado I'd like to bring up Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Applause)

GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:

Thank you. Thank you very much, appreciate it. I want to say thank you right off the top to John for the wonderful introduction and for the great work that you are doing. And BrightSource, I want to thank everyone at BrightSource for the great work that they are doing and contributing so much to the state of California and to the United States. David Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy, we want to thank him also and the California Energy Commission and everyone else that's here.

And a special thank you to Secretary Salazar, who is as passionate about this as I am and has traveled many, many times from Washington to California to work with us and to put this on fast track, to get us the permits going and everything. So, I mean, you really deserve all of the credit, so let's give him a big hand again for the great work that you have done. Thank you very much. (Applause)

I was given a speech but I'm going to close the speech because I just want to make a few comments, because I think you have said pretty much all the technical stuff already. (Laughter) I mean, he robbed all of our speeches and put it all into one. I think he got a copy of each one's speech.

But anyway, I just want to say, first of all, because you talked (Inaudible) when I ran for governor in 2003 I made it very clear that, you know, we should stop the fight over should we protect the environment or should we protect the economy. I always said that we can do both. And I think that we have proven that over the last few years since I have come into office, that you can put both of those together.

And this is why we went, when I came into office, we immediately, aggressively started building the Hydrogen Highway and we started to pass laws -- the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard, the Million Solar Roof Initiative to build solar roofs all over the state of California and also to pass AB 32 and to make a commitment, like some other countries have done all around the world, to reduce our greenhouse gases by 25 percent and to bring it back to the 1990 level. So that was our goal and, after 2020, to reduce it an additional 85 percent.

And this is extremely important, because we know what's going on with global warming and we know what's going on with the pollution, what kind of a health hazard it is and how many people are -- 100,000 people die every year because of our pollution, that die prematurely for no reason, only because of the pollution. So we can do much better than that.

California has made a decision, because we are the number one state in the country and because we are the number one place in the world, that we should not only be a leader in technology and in biotechnology, nanotechnology and our university system and show business and so on but we can be a leader also in environmental issues.

And this is a perfect example here, to be a leader in that. And I think that it's companies like this that are really -- and solar plants like this -- that are really making this now become a reality so we can achieve our goal by 2020.

And I'm so proud that we have also set a goal of 33 percent of renewables. And it's only with solar plants like this that we can and with wind farms and with geothermal, biomass and those kind of means that we can get to that goal in the first place. So I want to say congratulations to everyone that is involved with this project.

And I'm so proud -- I just came back from China and they were bragging about that they have the biggest solar plant. And that's true. But now, after we build this one, this will become the biggest solar plant in the world. (Applause) And it is not in China and it's not in Germany or in Spain or in Texas. No, it is right here in California. We have the biggest solar plant. (Laughter, applause)

And we have approved these last few months here in California 3,500 megawatts of solar. Now, this is absolutely revolutionary, if you think about that right now we are using, when it comes to megawatts, approximately 26,000 to 32,000 megawatts of energy. So we have approved solar plants now that is 10 percent of what we use in energy. This is absolutely extraordinary. It make us by far again the leader in the world.

And this is also, like I said, the reduction in greenhouse gases, we are talking here about 400,000 tons of reduction of greenhouse gases a year. That's an equivalent of taking 75,000 cars off the road, just to show to you what impact this plant here will have. (Applause)

And like you have heard, it will power 170,000 homes. So this is a win/win. And this is why I always say there are some people that look out in the desert and they see miles and miles of emptiness. I see miles and miles of a gold mine, of a gold mine of great, great opportunities. And this is one of the perfect kind of examples right here, is building this one and there will be many more to come.

So thank you very much, everyone, for the great work that you are doing. And thank you again, Secretary Salazar, for being out here with us and helping us so much. Thank you. (Applause)

I'm supposed to be introducing the next speaker, which happens to be Secretary Salazar. (Laughter) Please come up here and say a few words and share your wisdom. Thank you very much. (Applause)

SECRETARY SALAZAR:

You know, in another life he was an actor. (Laughter) In this life he has been a champion and a great governor for the state of California, your Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And sometimes I wonder, in many events like this -- as he and I have done so many of these things in California for the last 20 months -- what his future will be like and what kinds of movies he will be creating. And I can only think of movies like "Sun Catcher," as opposed to "Terminator," or "Creator of Renewable Energy" and lots of other things.

But thank you, Governor, for your great service to California, for leading the efforts for our country and for our world on so many fronts, including renewable energy. It's truly been a magnificent partnership between the United States and the state of California and we look forward to continuing our work together.

GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:

Thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause)

SECRETARY SALAZAR:

Let me also say thank you to BrightSource, to John Woolard and to all of the companies that are represented here, to NRG and to all of you who have made this possible.

I want to this morning, on behalf of the 72,000 employees of the United States Department of Interior, say thank you to two bureaus; the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees over 250 million acres of our nation's landmass and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees 554 national wildlife refuges and across the United States from sea to shining sea and out into our oceans across much of the world. And so for the BLM, Director Bob Abbey, the State Director Jim Abbott and all the employees from the BLM who are here, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the memory of a great leader, Sam Hamilton and all of the members of that team, if the Interior employees will stand up -- and Steve Black, my Counselor on Energy -- will you please give them a round of applause? (Applause)

As you can see, they sometimes are the ones who are like in the back and on the sides, because they're the ones who are really doing all the work that is making all of this happen as we move forward with this great renewable energy revolution. So thank you to Jim, to Brian Croft and to all of you in Interior.

I also want to make a quick thank you statement to a colleague of mine who has some deep roots in California -- that's Secretary Steven Chu -- and all of the people who are part of the Department of Energy, because without their program and without their incentives, which are being put on the ground here today, we would not be having this great success at Ivanpah. So give Secretary Chu and his team a round of applause as well. (Applause)

Ivanpah is truly a revolutionary project. It is a pioneering project, as was stated earlier. So I was thinking about it today -- and people were referencing a moon shot here in California with Ivanpah -- I was thinking back to what John Kennedy said back at the beginning of his administration, where he said that we would, in the United States, have the ability, if we only had the courage, to be able to get a man to the moon and we would be able to do that within 10 years. When he made that statement he had the vision of looking way ahead, because none of the facilities had been built, the engineering had not been put together. And so it was a dream and a vision that he had and yet, because of American ingenuity, because of the great people we had involved in those projects, we were able to get a man to the moon within nine years.

And so the vision that has been articulated here by BrightSource and by the Governor is very much a vision which this young president, President Obama, also shares, that we can get ourselves to a place in our world where we have captured the power of the sun and the power of the wind and the power of geothermal and that we can truly power our economy forward in a way that creates jobs here in America in a sustainable way for the long term, at the same time make sure that we are taking care of the environmental values which we so cherish here in the United States.

Now, the importance of this project can be articulated in terms of the largest solar facility which has broken ground here in the United States and on public lands, or it could be articulated in a way that I often have spoken about this project, that it's a good way of making believers out of those people who are skeptics. There are still people who are out there who say that we cannot do this.

But I dare say, just like John Kennedy said that we could go to the moon, that with Ivanpah and with so many other solar projects that we are approving and standing up across the deserts of the Southwest that we will, in fact, make believers out of the skeptics and we will, in fact, power our economy and the economy of the world going forward through the power of the sun. So thank you very much for your great example in helping us move forward with this visionary project.

Let me say that in terms of the values that are stake here -- (Applause) that it is about jobs and it is time for us to make sure that we recognize the jobs that are being created here, when we think about 1,000 jobs and the families that will actually be able to have a quality of life because of the jobs that are being created through renewable energy is something to celebrate.

But it's also about our reliance on foreign oil. From the days of Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter in the '70s and coining the term "energy independence," the failed policies on energy of the United States have taken us in the opposite direction. We're now turning the clock back and we're moving forward in a new direction with respect to that energy future that's all important for our national security.

And finally, with respect to clean air -- we will be able to power the economy of our world through clean energy sources and that's part of what we're doing here with capturing the power of the sun.

Now, when the President asked me to take over this department as Secretary of Interior, he and I agreed that what we would do was to work on clean energy and renewable energy projects across the West. We're seeing much of that progress now bearing fruit with the great efforts of our team throughout the Southwest. In the past month alone I have had the honor and privilege, on behalf of the American people, Governor, to put my signature on the six first-ever large scale solar projects on public land, including Ivanpah. That is for a total of 2,800 megawatts of renewable energy, solar power in the deserts of the Southwest, mostly here in California. (Applause)

So as this day of celebration moves forward, let us recommit ourselves to the proposition that our journey here has just begun. We know we have many chapters ahead of us as we move forward with this effort. It won't happen simply by coming together here as a community of celebrants of this new energy future.

But we know that if we keep our shoulders to the grindstone and if we continue to move forward with the ingenuity and with the courage and the vision of those that have gone before us, that we can in fact turn a new page in terms of how we power the American economy. And that will mean, at the end of the day, that we're celebrating the values which are truly American; that's about jobs for the American people, it's about energy security for the United States of America so we don't compromise our national security and it's about tackling the realities of clean air and climate change which we need to tackle in this 21st century.

Thank you all very much. (Applause)

MR. WOOLARD:

Thank you, Secretary. Thank you, Governor Schwarzenegger. I now have the pleasure of introducing David Crane. David is the CEO and president of NRG and NRG has just this morning announced that they will be investing 300 million into the Ivanpah project and will become, in a way, the anchor tenant of this wonderful project. (Applause)

I do have one thing I wanted to offer to you up here. When Bechtel first got the contract they sent us a very big sort of crystal Ivanpah memento that promptly went into the back of my office and I lost track of it -- it's similar to, you know, it's in the closet. (Laughter) I didn't take it seriously.

But then, when we started construction, I came on site and was given what you really, by the Bechtel team -- it's not a real project until you're given one of these to put on your desk. (Laughter) And so people know that it's a real project when you have one of these on your desk because then you've got real people out in the field. And so David, I wanted to give you -- (Laughter, applause)

MR. CRANE:

Well, thank you, John. I'm really quite underwhelmed by this. (Laughter) I mean, you know, it's tough enough following Governor Schwarzenegger and Secretary Salazar but following John Woolard and his speechifying -- so how about another hand for John? (Applause)

My impulse would be to stand up here for a long time, because it is about 10 degrees warmer up here than it was back there. But recognizing that you're still back there, I'm going to be mercifully brief. And also, this is BrightSource Energy's day, so I just really want to make three comments.

The first is that while it's true that it was announced today that NRG is going to invest $300 million in this project and so for a lot of people our involvement in the project is new, we've actually been looking at the project, studying the technology, looking at the construction plant, since last December.

And I can tell you -- and I tell you this with great sincerity, since NRG's largest investor is sitting in the audience -- that I am 100 percent confident in exercising my fiduciary responsibility on behalf of the shareholders of NRG that this is money is well invested from a risk/reward perspective and that we will do everything in our power -- and I'm sure that Ian and the Bechtel team will be glad to hear this -- to make sure that the project comes in on time and on budget and performs to expectations. (Laughter) So thank you (Inaudible) and for personally guaranteeing that to us at Bechtel. (Laughter)

So just very briefly, in terms of why we're doing this, my sense is that around our country we have a lot of perfectly able power companies that are modern, 20th century power companies. But the problem, of course, is that we're now 10 years into the 21st century and in that regard it takes people with a particularly progressive attitude.

And I just want to say that out here in California with your two biggest utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison, you're very fortunate, because I get around this country and there are a lot of utilities that do things because the public policy makers tell them to do things and they do things with great reluctance. But in the case of PG&E and SCE you're very lucky because they're doing these things because Californians want it and because it's the right thing to do. So I want to make sure that (Inaudible) (Applause) These projects are very dependent on the fact that PG&E and Southern California Edison have agreed to buy the power.

From our perspective at NRG, we also are trying to be a 21st century power company. We're following what I call the 'Gretzky Strategy.' You know, Wayne Gretzky always said that the reason he was a great player was not because he was the fastest skater or the best stick handler but because he skated to where the puck was going to be.

And that's what we're doing with our company. We're fundamentally in the clean energy economy and we're pursuing every aspect of that, from our perspective, with Department of Energy support. We're pursuing the idea of new advanced nuclear power, clean coal -- if it can really be made clean, which means zero carbon or very low carbon -- and lots of renewables.

So right now we own the largest solar photovoltaic plant operating in California, we own the largest solar photovoltaic plant that's under construction in California. But to give you the sense, this project is almost 10 times larger than the largest solar photovoltaic project that's being built in California, so we are very pleased to be part of this into the future. (Applause)

The final point I want to make -- and I think Secretary Salazar touched upon this -- we're all aware that there are some critics and skeptics and pessimists out there. You know, I've had the privilege of meeting Governor Schwarzenegger once before and what I took away from it was his relentless optimism about what could be achieved in this state, in this country and particularly here, in terms of achieving the clean energy economy.

So what I'd like to do is sort of really end by just addressing people who are skeptical or pessimistic about the future that I think all of us in this tent envision.

So, to those who believe that the American energy entrepreneurship and technological innovation has died and fled to China, I say let them meet the dedicated professionals of BrightSource.

And to those who believe the federal government is hindering rather than helping the creation of a 21st century energy infrastructure in this country, I say let them witness what the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy have done to facilitate this $2 billion project.

And finally, to those who complain that states like California, which elect to pursue a carbon-free future, are acting as job killers rather than as job creators, I say let them come here to Ivanpah.

So thank you very much. (Applause)

MR. BAR-LEV:

All right. We're going to bring all of our speakers back up here and we're going to read from a special commemorative that we've had prepared here. Adam, you want to bring that up here? John, you want to hold it? Let's gather around. You didn't think Governor Schwarzenegger could hold it up? (Laughter) And I'm going to read this. Everyone gathered around?

>>: Hold it higher.

MR. BAR-LEV:

Hold it higher. All right.

On this site BrightSource Energy commenced construction of the Ivanpah solar electric-generating system designed to reliably deliver low cost and low carbon solar power and to protect the desert environment. This transformational project serves as a cornerstone of Californian's and the nation's burgeoning clean energy economy. This plaque commemorates the construction of the Ivanpah Solar Complex and is a reminder for future generations of the pioneering business, labor, policy and environmental leaders who, through their vision --

And we have them up here.

-- who, through their vision and dedication created a new industry to ensure a prosperous and environmentally sound future.

(Applause)

Source