THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for November, 2010

Contributing editor Stephen Lacey shares advice from a group of experts on how to create a pathway to market in the solar photovoltaics realm: Test early, test often, and find a niche. 

Left to themselves, it seems that our politicians are not going to cut our addiction to foreign oil from unstable and unfriendly countries, adequately invest in the #1 job creation category of the future, or counteract the biggest human-caused environmental threats in history.

But, should they be left to themselves?

Van Jones, a temporary “victim” of the right-wing extremists that have gained more and more political power in recent years, recently brought this topic up in a speech beautifully covered by Adele Stan of AlterNet. Rather than blame Obama or elected officials or common people who don’t understand what we understand about the environment and the economy, we need to take responsibility for our part in this matter. Jones challenged:

The politics of hope and change in this country did not start in Iowa in 2008. The politics of hope and change started in 2003, when we didn’t have a superhero; we didn’t have a messiah, we didn’t have a lot of organization, we didn’t have a bunch of money. What we had was one-party rule here in D.C., and an unjust, unlawful war about to start — and each other. And with no superhero, and no messiah, you and me and people that we know took to the streets. And in six weeks, we organized more people against that war in Iraq than were organized against the Viet Nam war in six years. We did that. You did that….

So, if there’s an inspiration deficit, or an inspiration gap in America, don’t look to him, let’s look back to ourselves.

When it comes down to it, we are responsible for ourselves, and have we been doing what we should be doing?

Obama got into office from a strong surge of grassroots activism and support. But once he got in, we left him and members of Congress to do almost everything on their own. The forces against them (i.e. Big Business) turned the switch to full-steam-ahead and most of us went back to sitting on the couch.

With the momentum on their side, and a totally different Congress coming into office, they are looking to go further, looking to outright slam the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal body left with the power to significantly address climate change.

What are we going to do about it?

Van Jones said, we better get ready to fight, or else the whole planet is going to pay the price.

“That fight is going to be the most important fight for the environment on Planet Earth next year,” Jones said. “If we allow the authority that [EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson] already has to be taken away, the planet may be greenhouse-gas attacked.”

We need to get off our high horse, stop saying “if only Obama would do more” and get to work promoting the change we need, sharing the information too many people don’t have, and building momentum behind serious change again.

Jones said, “somehow we became a movement, after our greatest victory, that sits around munching popcorn, waiting for one person to give a great speech so we can feel good. Now, that’s gotta stop.”

Everyone holds some responsibility in this matter, and the question is, are we living up to ours?

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Photo Credit: kk+ via flickr (CC license)

What’s one sign that you are a clean tech leader? You get General Electric (GE) investing $2 billion in clean tech innovation and services in your country.

China is going to be the “lucky” recipient of such investment, it was announced this week. $500 million is going towards clean tech research and development (R&D) and the other $1.5 billion is going towards technology and financial services joint ventures.

Of course, the clean-tech-friendly Chinese government is easier to partner with than many other world-leading governments (ahem,.. the U.S. government), making China more and more attractive to those looking to invest and expand into this industry more and more.

“GE has already signed four energy and rail joint venture agreements with Chinese state-owned firms,” Reuters reported. “Two of the agreements are with units of China’s State Grid, the country’s largest power grid operator, one to manufacture and market grid monitoring and diagnostic products and another to buy a controlling stake in a Shanghai-based green power distribution equipment maker.”

The other two agreements are “with a unit of China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corp to develop components for diesel locomotives and with the Beijing National Railway Research and Design Institute of Signal and Communication to supply railway and urban transit signaling systems.”

“The new joint ventures are in line with our strategy to build partnerships in China to support our business here and globally,” said GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt.

In total, the investments, which are to go through 2012 are expected to create 1,000 jobs.

Over the next five years, GE plans to invest a total of $10 billion in clean energy goods and services. With a ton of clean-energy-killers recently being elected to U.S. Congress, I can’t be very hopeful that much of that is going to be invested in the U.S…. just sayin’.

Photo Credit: Timothy Valentine via flickr (CC license)

The United Nations has published a very instructive manual for a civilization hurtling towards the increasingly expensive catastrophes looming right ahead of us, and projected to cost world governments, and their taxpayers, an expected $185 billion every year by the end of century.

Jam-packed with data and conclusions, the UN manual is intended as a how-to guide for the finance ministers of governments on mitigating the catastrophic expense of the increase in natural disasters, whether due to climate change, like the increase in floods, droughts, and hurricanes and cyclones, or not (mitigating tsunamis and earthquakes is covered as well).

But it is not just some bureaucratic tome. It is so beautifully written, (and with such hope and faith in human intelligence) that the wealth of lessons it offers in its 290 pages are easy to absorb for the rest of us too.

And that’s a good thing. Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters: The Economics of Effective Prevention is full of smart ideas for improving our resilience in ameliorating the expected expenses of the expected increase in disasters.

Some pieces of advice take no investment on the part of governments. One example is just altering laws on the books that currently offer perverse incentives for poor building practices, such as building in forests now prone to wildfire, or with inadequate engineering for coastal flood zones.

Where investments are needed, they come with data-rich cost/benefit analysis. For example, (pg 150) comprehensive data on exactly how big an investment in a mangrove forest will yield how large a savings in dollars for its natural services, based on past disasters.

Some things we cannot prepare for. We don’t even know what all of the effects of climate change will be. While some effects can be modeled and predicted, as was the now melting arctic, and estimates can be made for the increased cost of the modeled increase predicted in floods, droughts, crop failure and sea level rise, there will be more surprises.

While scientists can (and did) generalize that eco systems will adapt at different rates, leading to new pest invasions in general – no scientist specifically predicted that the pine beetle would decimate forests from Colorado to British Columbia, for example (to my knowledge). There will be more surprises ahead.

As future climate changes rip yet more of our complex ecosystems out of sync with each other, there will be more unexpected effects that no one could have predicted.

Both the scale of the oncoming disasters, and the surprises it will bring, is unprecedented in human history.

Yet the tone of the manual is positive, and its faith in human intelligence in finding solutions for the problems that we face makes for a refreshing read in these times when it is easy to doubt that we are Homo Sapiens, and not those other guys that didn’t make it past history’s big evolutionary IQ test.

Image: Georgie Sharp
Susan Kraemer@Twitter

Sharp is better know for its other products, of course, but this technology giant is gaining more and more of a solar energy presence. To up its clean energy focus, it recently bought 100% of Recurrent Energy stock for $305 million. Sharp is now planning to have Recurrent Energy lead its solar generation work.

“Recurrent Energy’s expertise and relationships will help Sharp become a total solutions company in the PV field, extending from developing and producing solar cells and modules to developing and marketing solar power generation plants,” Sharp’s executive vice president in charge of overseas business, Toshishige Hamano, said.

Recurrent Energy reports that it has about 2GW of solar energy projects in the pipeline and 330MW of contracted projects, most of which are in North America, including a 170-megawatt contract with the Ontario Power Authority, a 60-megawatt contract with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and 50-megawatt contract with Southern California Edison.

Even being a complete subsidiary of Sharp, though, Recurrent Energy says that it will make sure to provide the right equipment for each job and at a good price by using a “variety of vendors” — the company has bought from solar giants such as Suntech Power, Yingli Green Energy, and SolarWorld in the past. But I’m sure Sharp, one of the largest solar panel manufacturers in the world, will get at least a little more solar technology business out of this deal.

Recurrent Energy has announced that it will be keeping its executive staff and its own name and views this purchase as an empowering change more than anything else.

“We are really spreading our wings with strategic support from Sharp,” CEO Arno Harris said when the deal was first announced a couple months ago.

Photo Credit: Eleventh Earl of Mar via flickr (CC license)