Celestica to create 300 solar panel jobs
The company announced recently that it will supply the panels for Recurrent Energy, a solar power developer with contracts for 19 facilities in Ontario.
Celestica expects to manufacture "hundreds of thousands" of panels for Recurrent Energy over the next two and a half years, said CelesticaÂ’s senior vice president Mike Andrade.
Each panel is worth about $600. Celestica will sell panels to other solar developers as well, Andrade said.
Energy minister Brad Duguid was on hand at the plant announcement to talk about the new jobs and the clean energy.
The Conservatives have been criticizing the Liberals for driving up the price of electricity by signing dozens of new contracts at prices higher than the wholesale market rate.
Duguid said the Liberal plan to boost renewables and shut down all the province's coal-burning generating stations by 2014 will save the province billions in health care costs.
He also noted the stress that U.S. president Barack Obama had put on renewable energy in his State of the Union address last week.
Ontario's push for renewable energy makes it a "global juggernaut" well poised to take advantage of an expanding clean energy sector in the U.S., he told reporters.
Related News

Britain's National Grid Drops China-Based Supplier Over Cybersecurity Fears
LONDON - Britain's National Grid has started removing components supplied by a unit of China-backed Nari Technology's from the electricity transmission network over cybersecurity fears.
The decision came in April after the utility sought advice from the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), a branch of the nation's signals intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the newspaper quoted a Whitehall official as saying.
National Grid declined to comment citing "confidential contractual matters." "We take the security of our infrastructure very seriously and have effective controls in place to protect our employees and critical assets to ensure we can continue to reliably, safely and…