A feature in GreenTech Media highlighted the $1.45 billion loan guarantee for Abengoa Solar‘s Concentrating Solar Power project in Gila Bend, Ariz. that President Obama recently announced as part of his green jobs initiative.

The article resulted from an interview RenewComm coordinated with Santiago Seage, the CEO of Abengoa Solar, and reporter Eric Wesoff shortly after DOE Secretary Steven Chu approved the massive loan guarantee, one of two for U.S.-based utility-scale solar projects.

Wesoff wrote:

The biggest announced project was Abengoa’s 250 megawatt Solana Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) project… [which] slightly surpasses the recent $1.37 billion loan guarantee for fellow CSP player Brightsource Energy.

The loan guarantee process was started over a year and a half ago. According to the CEO, “It has been a long process with lots of work with the DOE.  It is expensive and not an easy process but the DOE has been very professional and they have invested enough time to do things very thoroughly.”

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RenewComm hosted a Film Premiere, Solutions Fair and Wine Tasting at the Navy Memorial in downtown D.C. to showcase the D.C.-premiere of the independent film Local Warming, a quirky environmental comedy about one mother’s quest to reduce her neighborhood’s carbon footprint.

Prior to the event, RenewComm coordinated an interview with Channel 8 News Newstalk host Bruce Depuyt, who talked with production coordinator Mackie Riley and Chesapeake Climate Action Network’s Diego Arene-Morley, age 14, about local solutions to global warming.

“I realized how easy it is to make a difference,” said Riley, who before working on the film was not involved in the fight against global warming herself.

“The movie should hopefully raise awareness about people trying to reduce their carbon footprint in a local way,” Diego said of the premiere. Already an organizer himself, of the Mt. Pleasant Solar Cooperative, he urged everyone to get informed, and to get an energy audit at their own house.

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Renewable energy projects were starved for ideal locations in the U.S. while the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) restricted access. That’s why it came as a welcome surprise when the BLM suddenly reversed a policy that had frozen solar energy projects on federal land.

“I think that BLM is trying to do the right thing,” says Fred Morse, U.S. senior advisor to Abengoa Solar and industry leader during an interview that RenewComm coordinated with CNN reporter Bill Tucker.

On Lou Dobbs Tonight, Morse praised BLM’s decision:

“Land is essential. So it’s extremely important that federal land be made available. They are in many cases the ideal locations for these large clean carbon-free power plants.”

Watch here