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NASHVILLE -- Gov. Phil Bredesen signed Tennessee's $29.4 billion budget plan into law on Thursday and talked about his recent European trade mission trip that he hopes will lead to more state investment.

Bredesen, a Democrat, said the budget passed by the Legislature largely reflects his original budget proposal. The state share of the spending plan, about $12.1 billion, is about a 10 percent cut from last year's budget. The budget year begins July 1.

It includes $2.2 billion in federal stimulus money the governor said will help prevent even deeper spending cuts.

"It was obviously a tough budget," said Bredesen, who also signed into law a stimulus-funded measure to extend unemployment benefits.

Bredesen and Economic and Community Development Commissioner Matt Kisber also discussed their trip to Europe last week. The governor said he thought they were successful in conveying that Tennessee is a place companies can do business.

"This trip was about planting the seed for business recruitment and further job recruitment," he said.

Both men said a recurring theme during the trip was the rapidly growin clean energy sector. Kisber said they seized "the opportunity to promote the state's interest in solar energy."

Bredesen's budget includes the use of $62 million in federal stimulus money to build a solar power generation plant at a megasite near Brownsville and establish a solar power research institute at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

The governor in his State of State Address this year called for the creation of the institute to spur green energy jobs, and has promoted an effort to develop a biofuel made from switchgrass.

The University of Tennessee received $70 million from the state to develop and support a biofuels refinery built with private partner DuPont Co.

Meanwhile, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory won a $125 million designation by the Department of Energy as a national biofuels research center.

The Oak Ridge lab, with its supercomputing resources and its ability to study new materials at the Spallation Neutron Source facility, would be key to the solar energy project.

Tennessee has enjoyed a recent string of success in green energy development, including two massive plants that will make polysilicon, a material used to make solar cells.

Munich, Germany-based Wacker Chemie AG earlier this year announced plans to build a $1 billion polysilicon plant in rural southeast Tennessee, while Michigan-based Hemlock Semiconductor Corp. has broken ground on a $1.2 billion plant in Clarksville.

Bredesen and Kisber visited the Wacker plant during their visit.

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