Sharp to boost thin film solar capacity 6-fold to 6000 MW by 2014, U.S. hits snooze button
The world’s second-largest maker of solar batteries plans a massive increase in capacity to meet soaring demand. Bloomberg reports:
The company will raise the capacity to 6 gigawatts as early as 2014, from 1 gigawatt estimated for 2010…
Sharp, which lost its market-leading position to Thalheim, Germany-based Q-Cells AG last year, is focusing on expanding its solar-cell output through thin-film technology. This uses 1 percent the amount of silicon needed for conventional models….
One gigawatt of power is enough to light up at least 200,000 households of four people in Japan….
Yes, the United States created the solar cell industry and literally launched it into space 50 years ago. And yes solar PV is going to be one of the largest job-creating industries of the century, projected to grow from “from a $20 billion industry in 2007 to $74 billion by 2017.” And yes today America has precisely one of the top ten PV plants, with plummeting market share, as the figure above makes all too painfully clear
But don’t get all friggin’ sentimental on me. Think of the few billion dollars U.S. taxpayers saved because:
- President Reagan gutted Jimmy Carter’s renewable energy program (see “Who got us in this energy mess? Start with Ronald Reagan“).
- Newt Gingrich blocked President Clinton’s effort to boost funding for solar PV research and deployment programs.
- Conservatives in general like John McCain and George Bush opposed the kind of funding and incentives that countries like Japan and Germany embraced.
The fundamental tenets of conservative ideology say that if countries like Japan and Germany and China make most of the PV cells it must be because they have an inherent “comparative” advantage over us. You gotta start reading your Ricardo, people. Any card-carrying conservative knows that if other countries manage to get millions of their workers’ hands dirty actually making stuff, it’s only because they are better at it. We’re still the brainiacs who invent the technologies first and then wisely save a few pennies of the taxpayer dollars not promoting American technologies into billion-dollar American industries. We’ve still got all those Internet-related jobs, and it’s not like the government had anything to do with that.
So please, all you progressives and enviros out there, stop your whining. The plan is unfolding as it should, indeed as it must. Do not argue with the invisible hand. People will think you’re crazy.
Sure those thin films look cool. They seem like something that could generate a lot of jobs for a high-tech, high wage economy.
But don’t be deceived by liberal propaganda. I have it on the very highest authority that real men (and women) who want real jobs drill, baby, drill.
Related Posts:
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Slightly OT, but please see Google’s “Clean Energy 2030″ plan, at
knol.google.com/k/-/-/15×31uzlqeo5n/1#
CNET has the news about it at
news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10056099-54.html?tag=mncol;posts
It’s great to have a powerhouse like Google onboard. Readers of ClimateProgress will quickly recognize the efficiency and renewable wedges in Google’s plan, though they don’t use the term.
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Joe, a few editorial questions:
Where you write: “second-largest maker of solar batteries . . .” do you actually mean solar cells, or solar panels?
When you combine news and comment with sarcasm, righteous anger, and snark is difficult to follow. I sure feel that anger myself, but I’m not always sure I understand where the transition to sarcasm takes place.
“Drill, baby, drill” also means “burn, baby, burn”. Oil cheerleaders are the new radical, destructive hippies.
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
“Burn, baby, burn” is from the 1965 Watts riots. Doubt that there were any hippies hanging around in Watts at that time.
Hippies, in 1965, were just getting off the ground. If you don’t recall, they were the people who spoke out in favor of protecting the Earth and against excessive materialism.
“Destructive hippies” does not compute….
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Hmm,
Given that I’m English, I can’t ay that I’m all that bothered. As for the brainiacs bit try this.http://www.pvresources.com/en/history.php
Look at all those nationalities.
As for the future
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7645743.stm
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Well, there is the compartive advantage.
You know where we are supposed to buy our tobacco for cigars from Cuba and shoot wolves from airplanes in Alaska. (Alexander Haig was smoking a Cuban cigar and was told they were illegal in this country. He said he knew, he liked to think that he was burning Castro’s fields.)
Japan and Germany have some very smart scientists and they can spend all that money on research of a solar power product that they can use.
The US has alot of land that can use Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and Japan and Germany doesn’t have any. So the US, along with Spain and other countries with desert hot land should develop the CSP. Then we can buy into PV’s after they spent all that research money into it.
Should we have spent money into it so many years ago? Yah, that would be true. But at least we get to use the benefit of Japan and German Scientists.
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Bob - thanks for the historical note. The point I’m trying to make (too obliquely perhaps) is simply that when people chant “drill, baby, drill” they necessarily imply “burn, baby, burn”, since the whole point of producing oil is to burn it.
“Drill, baby, drill” is a destructive policy. Equating it with “Burn, baby, burn” makes the point.
And maybe now you know why I will never be either a politician or political debate coach.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
“Drill, baby, drill” = “Burn, baby, burn” works on a deeper level than just pointing out that drilling more oil means burning more oil and releasing more sequestered carbon into the atmosphere.
“Burn, baby, burn” was the chant coming from people who were reacting to problems brought about by racist policies in the US. Their anger exploded and ignited their neighborhoods. Quite literally, ignited their own neighborhoods.
What they saw as a solution - “Burn” was not. In fact, it even made things worse for them as it burned down their own houses, stores, and public buildings.
In the same way “Drill” is not in the best interest of the American people. Drill and burn just keeps us on the petroleum teat longer and ships more of our money to places that don’t like us. And drilling further screws the climate in which we are going to have to live. By drilling we’re “burning” ourselves and our futures.
Americans should be shouting “Renewables, baby, renewables!!!”.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Right on.