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Ford and Magna, Canada’s largest auto-parts supplier, jointly developed the electric version of the automaker’s Focus small car, which will be featured on the new Jay Leno television show, Bill Ford said. GM today agreed to sell a 55 percent stake in Opel to Magna and Russian partner OAO Sberbank.

Bill Ford was at the Wixom plant to announce an agreement to sell the factory to Austin, Texas-based Xtreme Power Inc. and Santa Barbara, California-based Clairvoyant Energy, which plan to invest $725 million to create a manufacturing park for renewable-energy companies.

The new owners plan to begin redeveloping the site early next year, with manufacturing to start in late 2011.

The 52-year-old great-grandson of the automaker’s founder, who calls himself an “environmental industrialist,” has pushed his company to introduce alternative-fuel vehicles. Ford Motor now has four hybrids, including two SUVs, and plans to offer two electric models in the next two years.

Ford Motor closed the Wixom plant in 2007 under a plan to shutter 16 factories by 2012 because of declining U.S. sales. Ford produced Lincoln Town Car large sedans and Ford Thunderbird cars at Wixom, a suburb northwest of Detroit.

Bill Ford said he will continue to have discussions with Magna about protecting his company’s propriety blueprints for cars and components. “We don’t have any plans to change the nature of our relationship,” he said.

Bill Ford said he doesn’t see his company at a competitive disadvantage to GM and Chrysler Group LLC, which have reduced debt and labor costs after each emerged from a government- sponsored bankruptcy reorganization in the past three months. Ford is in talks with the United Auto Workers union to match concessions those two companies received.

“I wouldn’t trade places with either one of them,” Bill Ford said. “I like the fact that we’re the master of our own destiny.”

Employment will have to improve before auto sales rebound, even as there are signs of a U.S. economic recovery, such as the credit markets thawing, he said.

“I won’t feel better until I see people going back to work,” Bill Ford said. The companies moving into Ford’s old factory plan to hire more than 4,000 workers, he said.

Ford gained 5 cents to $7.44 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have more than tripled this year.

Ford will sell the plant to Clairvoyant Energy and Xtreme Power, which requested state tax breaks to finance the project. Earlier today, the state senate approved $100 million in tax credits for the project. The plant sits on 320 acres and the 4.7-million square-foot plant will be renovated.

“Ths is the dawn of a new industrial age,” said David Hardee, CEO of Clairvoyant Energy.

Xtreme Power, based in Austin, Texas, will manufacture large-scale power systems that store renewable energy such as solar and wind power. Clairvoyant Energy, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., will manufacture solar panels in a production agreement with Oerikon Solar USA.

Tom Walsh of the Detroit Free Press recently wrote about the signifigance of the site and the project, and adds a few more details on the job numbers.

–In what shapes up as a $1-billion conversion of an iconic rust-belt industrial plant into a massive renewable energy park, Ford Motor Co. has struck a tentative deal to sell its dormant Wixom Assembly Plant to Xtreme Power of Austin, Texas, and Clairvoyant Energy of Santa Barbara, Calif.

Investment in the proposed project would initially be $725 million to create 4,300 direct jobs, growing eventually to about $1 billion altogether. The two firms would use about half of the 4.7 million square feet of buildings on the 320-acre site, and recruit other firms to join them.

It’s perhaps fitting that the Ford Wixom plant — which built gas guzzlers such as the Lincoln Town Car for 50 years and once employed 5,000 — stands to become a centerpiece of Michigan’s effort to create green jobs in solar, wind, electric propulsion and other non-fossil-fuel energy sectors.

Xtreme Power, which makes large stationary batteries, would create 2,500 direct jobs at Wixom — which would result in 10,000 supplier jobs, of which 1,500 would be located either in Wixom or within a 10-mile radius.

Clairvoyant proposes to install one solar panel manufacturing line initially, employing 300 people, and expects to put in three more lines later.

Production at the facility is slated to begin in 2011.

But behind some of the buildings' walls, a group of renewable-energy companies are working to transform the defunct assembly into a manufacturing park for equipment such as thin-film solar panels and energy-storage and power-management systems for solar- and wind-power systems. Xtreme Power, which makes the energy-storage and power-management systems, and Clairvoyant Energy, which develops thin-film solar production capacity using equipment from Oerlikon Solar, have agreed to buy the space from Ford — with the help of about $100 million in tax credits and funding from other government sources.

The assembly plant turns out to be ideal for thin-film manufacturing. For one thing, it's in a very convenient location near road, rail and numerous suppliers of key materials, such as glass, said Chris O’Brien, head of North American market development for Oerlikon. "One of the most important materials to a PV module is glass. A number of glass suppliers in the area who have historically been suppliers to the auto industry currently have excess capacity, so there are natural synergies there." The structure of the building also is well-suited to house thin-film manufacturing machinery, he added. "The plant is idle, available, in a region that has a skilled labor force that's experienced in manufacturing and [has] some terrific [research and development] facilities nearby."

The project has been cited as a poignant example of an attempt to replace some of the country's thousands of lost automobile-manufacturing jobs with green jobs. It's also one of the latest pieces of news highlighting the ability of some renewable-energy companies to benefit from the recession — and especially from the auto industry's pain.

In a just-released report, Clean Tech Job Trends 2009, research firm Clean Edge lists the project as one of several examples of clean-tech companies opening factories in towns that have experienced plant closures in the last few years. In Newton, Iowa, for example, 1,800 employees lost their jobs in 2006, when Whirlpool bought home-appliance maker Maytag Corp. and closed its offices and plants in the city. Wind-turbine-blade maker TPI Composites, which last year opened a factory in Newton, Iowa, already employs 325 people there today and hopes to expand to 500 employees by 2010. Setting up shop in those areas gives companies access to skilled workers who need minimal retraining, according to the report. [Editor's note: for more on Clean Tech Job Trends 2009, check out today's In Focus: Clean Edge Says Clean Tech Jobs are Everywhere.]

Other examples from the report include thin-film solar company Konarka, which last year opened a manufacturing facility in New Bedford, Mass., at the site of a Polaroid factory that closed in 2007; and green-building materials company Serious Materials, which this year bought and reopened a Kensington Windows factory that had closed last year. (See chart, below. Courtesy of CleanEdge)

The principal of buying assets when they're cheap is hardly a new idea, and renewable energy is no exception. Valero Renewable Fuels bought a group of ethanol factories from bankrupt VeraSun Energy Corp. back in April, paying only about 25 percent of the estimated cost of building those factories from scratch. Solar and other cleantech companies are hoping to do the same thing: take advantage of the low prices available today to expand their manufacturing capacity cheaply and to position themselves to grow when market conditions improve.

It's not just the big companies either. Sure, German solar company SolarWorld offered to buy Opel facilities from General Motors Corp., later dropping its bid. But in some ways, the recession has been a boon to startups that might have otherwise had difficulty raising the capital to buy manufacturing equipment, or persuading manufacturing partners to buy the equipment, especially if they plan to start small.

Take concentrating-photovoltaic startup Skyline Solar, which plans to have its systems made in metal shops that make parts for the automobile industry. Tim Keating, vice president of marketing for the company said the company expects to make "multiple megawatts" of its systems on those automobile lines starting at the end of this year.

And SunModular, a startup developing a component to help keep crystalline-silicon panels cool — which it claims can boost a system's electricity output by between 5 and 10 percent — also plans to use the extra capacity at automotive-supply factories to keep its manufacturing expenses low.

Aside from the manufacturing capacity, the hard times for the auto industry also means good deals for capital equipment, including machines for plastic molding and sheet metal fabrication, CEO Eugenia Corrales said. "There are a lot of large capacities available and we can leverage [them]," she said, adding that the automotive downturn has been "a good thing for us." "We're not having to convince suppliers to buy big new pieces of equipment. They already have it."

Meanwhile, other companies are finding ways to make use of automotive technology for renewable energy. Artemis Intelligent Power in September scored a £1 million grant from the U.K. government to convert its hydraulic pump and motor technology, currently used in automotive applications, to make wind-turbine transmission systems.

Of course, it also makes sense for companies going after government funding — especially in the United States — to underline a connection to auto-industry suffering. One of the goals of the stimulus has been to replace lost jobs with new green jobs, and the automotive industry has suffered more than most others. Some companies aiming for stimulus funding have been currying favor with government agencies by planning U.S. manufacturing plants or locating projects — complete with green jobs — in Detroit. “There is no way to avoid the political context in which all this has happened,” said Harrison Wellford, founder and managing director for consulting firm Terrawell Energy. Building projects in regions that are hurting the most, such as in Michigan, helps, he added.

The connection between solar energy and cars may be growing in other ways too. Toyota launched a solar-paneled Prius for its 2010 model. Fisker Automotive, which scored a $529 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy last month, has designed its Karma sports car with a solar roof. And SolarCity in September announced it had built a solar-powered electric-car-charging corridor between Los Angeles and San Francisco in California.

While SolarCity chief executive Lyndon Rive said he wouldn't call the small — but growing — market for electric vehicles a driver for solar power, he certainly would like electric-vehicle owners to install solar panels on their homes and businesses. "The focus is adding all the ingredients to live a carbon-free lifestyle," he said. "If every car was an [electric vehicle], it would help the problem, but not solve it. You need [electric vehicles] combined with solar to start making a difference."

A United States Senate Subcommittee on Green Jobs report earlier this year, for example, found low pay in wind and solar energy, green construction, and recycling workplaces, with jobs in recycling processing paying as low as $8.25 an hour and jobs in renewable-energy factories paying as little as $11 an hour.

According to that report, many wind and solar factories pay below the national average for workers manufacturing durable goods, and most green carpenters, roofers, painters and laborers earn less than $12.50 per hour.

The findings from the PayScale and Clean Edge survey strike something of a counterpoint to that study.

The median earnings found in the survey range from $36,100 a year for an insulation worker to $112,000 a year for design engineering managers in alternative energy, according to Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at PayScale.

All the jobs PayScale found were “very reasonably paid,” Mr. Lee said, adding that several entry-level positions — including jobs as solar-energy system installers and solar fabrication technicians — require only high school or associate’s degrees and pay more than $40,000 annually.

“It’s not like working the McDonald’s line,” he said.

Most of the jobs in the survey are for employees with bachelor’s degrees, and more than one-third are engineering jobs, Mr. Lee said.

Still, clean-tech jobs aren’t yet able to replace all the jobs lost in other industries, Ron Pernick, a principal at Clean Edge and the lead author of the report, said during a conference call. And many projects have been put on hold or scrapped in the economic downturn, Mr. Pernick said.

But a significant number of clean-tech jobs offer competitive wages, he added, and a number of companies are opening factories in places that have recently sustained manufacturing layoffs.

Some bright spots include wind-turbine-blade manufacturing by TPI Composites, which has hired 325 people since last year in Newton, Iowa, where Maytag laid off 1,800 workers in 2007. The company aims to employ 500 workers by next year.

Another example is a Ford assembly plant in Michigan that sent 1,500 employees packing when it closed in 2007. It is slated for conversion into a renewable-energy manufacturing park by the energy-storage company Xtreme Power and Clairvoyant Energy, a solar-panel manufacturer.

“It’s encouraging to see that in a dire economic situation, one of the few places we’re seeing job creation is in the clean-tech industry,” Mr. Pernick said.

Through a series of incentives and programs, Michigan is launching a concerted effort to turn the state’s once-powerful auto-manufacturing infrastructure into a bastion of clean and alternative energy product manufacturers. Through mechanisms such as the Advanced-battery incentives, the 21st Century Jobs Fund, alternative-energy and high-tech tax credits, renewable-energy Renaissance Zones, Anchor Zone incentives and Centers of Energy Excellence, Michigan is attracting a range of clean-energy companies who are bringing with them tax revenue and jobs.

In her weekly radio address, Gov. Granholm outlined two solar panel operations that agreed to build facilities in Michigan. Clairvoyant Energy will convert part of Ford’s former Wixom Assembly plant in Oakland County and Suniva is building a new solar manufacturing plant in Saginaw County. Clairvoyant will be joined by Xtreme Power, a builder of stationary battery systems to store solar and wind energy, at the Wixom plant, as Xtreme Power is said to invest $475 million and create 2.500 jobs.

In order to land these companies, the state has issued $140 million in tax credits over the course of five years. But Gov. Granholm and Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) President and CEO Greg Main are betting the solar business will be worth every penny.

“Together, Clairvoyant and Suniva are investing more than $1.1 billion in Michigan and hiring 1,250 workers,” Gov. Granholm said in her radio address. And MEDC President and CEO Greg Main praised the governor and state legislature for giving Michigan the tools needed to entice industry leaders. “Thanks to a coordinated strategic plan driven by research and designed to leverage our strengths, we are now out in front of our competition to capture the solar market and create thousands of new jobs in Michigan,” Mr. Main said in a statement.

To help streamline the policy and regulatory side of Michigan’s green economy equation, Gov. Granholm also announced the dissolution of two natural resource and environmental agencies to be combined under one roof. The Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE) will implement an ecosystem-based strategy for resource management, effectively using natural resources in a sustainable manner, and providing for continuous improvements in Michigan’s air, water and soils while facilitating and encouraging economic growth. Lt. Governor John D. Cherry, Jr., who is leading a broad review of state government in an attempt to reorganize the state executive branch from sixteen departments down to eight, said the new DNRE will have a host of conservation authority.

“The new department will be leaner, more efficient and better able to manage our natural resources and protect our environment,” Cherry said.

A transition manager has been put in place until a permanent department head is announced in January 2010.

Lastly, Gov. Granholm and Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle unveiled their plan for jobs and energy infrastructure at a closed session of the Midwestern Governors Association last week. The Jobs and Energy Infrastructure Accord will serve as a basis to help attract investment in clean energy, by aligning energy, economic and workforce policies. The Energy Infrastructure aspect of the accord identifies steps the states will take to expand electricity transmission, carbon capture and storage, smart-grid, and biofuel transport technologies so they can efficiently transmit clean energy throughout the region to the rest of the country.

“We are focused on ways to create jobs in this new energy economy, both in Michigan and across the Midwest,” Gov. Granholm said.