Can the U.S. Jump Back into the Solar Race?

[xchrom]

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/02/29/can-the-u-s-jump-back-into-the-solar-race/

BOSTON—Back in 1995, when the global market for solar panels was small, the U.S. shipped more than 40 percent of the world’s photovoltaic modules, which produce electricity from light. Today the number is closer to 4 percent.

As China, Taiwan, Europe and Japan have dramatically stepped up production of photovoltaics, American companies have not kept pace with a growing industry. But the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is not throwing in the towel. The DOE’s SunShot initiative aims to revive the U.S. solar industry to create green jobs, and drive down prices in the process so that solar can compete with fossil-fuel energy sources.

“The first premise is the fact that we want to have subsidy-free solar electricity,” SunShot director Ramamoorthy Ramesh said here this week at a meeting of the American Physical Society. SunShot, he said, aims to drop the price of solar power by about 75 percent by 2020, bringing down the purchase and installation costs of solar arrays to about $1 per watt. “These are very lofty goals,” Ramesh acknowledged. “It’s very difficult to do this.”

From the name on down, SunShot is meant to evoke the moon shots of the 1960s and 1970s, and like the Apollo program it stems from a presidential directive to solve difficult problems in science and technology. (With about $300 million a year in federal funding, however, SunShot is small potatoes compared to the Apollo program.)

[Lawlbringer]

1. Now that Rick Perry has

cracked the conspiracy about the nation of Solyndra, I don't think so.

[JDPriestly]

2. Solar is really important for the Southwest

especially Southern California.

We don't have coal here. We don't have water either.

We have sun.

I'm convinced that in the long run, each region of the country will have to find the cheapest, closest source of energy for it and develop it.