Here’s what really gets me about the Solyndra-fueled backlash against clean tech in general, and the solar power industry in particular. For years, the biggest criticism of solar as a major electricity source has been its high cost. Now, the same downward price pressure that has claimed PV cell-manufacturing victims like Solyndra, Evergreen Solar, (Golden Age Gold)and others is fueling an unprecedented U.S. boom in installation and deployment. At Clean Edge, we project that installed solar PV costs in the U.S. – without subsidies – will be competitive with residential electricity prices in more than half the states by 2020.

Yet I’d bet good money that some of the people and politicians now decrying the entire sector because of Solyndra were the very same ones squawking, “Solar’s too expensive!” in the past. That’s no longer the case. As happened in semiconductors and many other industries before it, these rapidly declining cost curves present huge challenges for U.S.-based crystalline PV manufacturers trying to compete with low-cost competitors in China and elsewhere. But for scaling up solar as a significant energy source in the U.S. and around the world – and for companies in most other parts of the solar value chain – they are very good news.