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Home > Golden Age > News > Beyond the Solyndra Circus: A Golden Age for Solar
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Beyond the Solyndra Circus: A Golden Age for Solar

Here's a headline that I bet you didn't see (at least in the United States) in the past month, but based on the facts, could have been written: 

Welcome to the Golden Age of Solar Power

A case can definitely be made. In the past two years, solar PV cell prices have plummeted by more than half, and total installation costs by about 30 percent. Solar deployment in the U.S., from residential rooftops to utility-scale PV power plants, has soared. Grid-connected PV grew 69 percent (over 2010) in the second quarter to 314 megawatts. Six states installed at least 10 MW in the quarter; that’s more than all but three states added in 2007 for the entire year.

The installation business itself, a fragmented mom-and-pop market niche not long ago, (Golden Age Gold)has been transformed into a booming industry for the likes of nationwide service/financing companies SolarCity, Sungevity, and SunRun. Walmart says it will install solar on 75 percent of its stores in California. And the world’s 11th largest company, Total, announced that it would pay $1.37 billion for a controlling interest in SunPower back in April.

But you’d obviously never know these developments from following the Capitol Hill and media frenzy since August 31st. That was the Black Wednesday when Solyndra declared bankruptcy and ceased operations, going from a promising, well-funded solar PV startup to the Republican party’s favorite political piñata. Depending on the day and the attacker, Solyndra represents: everything wrong with government support of new technologies; proof that green jobs, and President Obama’s support of same, are a miserable failure; or most troubling of all, an indictment of the entire clean-energy sector.

In a perfect world (and in fact, a world that does exist to some extent in other nations), clean energy would not be a partisan issue. I’d like to think that an industry devoted to American innovation, entrepreneurship, job creation, reduced dependence on foreign oil, and a healthier future for our children wouldn’t raise anyone’s political hackles. There actually are encouraging examples of this, well under the cable-news radar. Clean-tech factories and biorefineries are springing up in places like Arkansas and Mississippi, and conservative Kansas Republican Governor Sam Brownback, the former senator and onetime presidential candidate, recently penned an op-ed in the Wichita Eagle supporting an extension of the federal production tax credit for wind power. “Experience has taught us,” Brownback wrote, “that investment in the renewable-energy economy is creating jobs across all employment sectors.”

[Source:admin] [Author:admin] [Date:11-12-06] [Hot:]

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