Solar on Site Map subfolders
By Thomas L Freedman: Applied
Materials ... gave me a tour of the company’s Silicon Valley
facility, culminating with a visit to its “war room,” where
Applied maintains a real-time global interaction with all 14
solar panel factories it’s built around the world in the last
two years. ... Not a single one is in America.
Let’s see: five are in Germany, four are in China, one is in
Spain, one is in India, one is in Italy, one is in Taiwan and
one is even in Abu Dhabi. I suggested a new company motto for
Applied Materials’s solar business: “Invented here, sold
there.”
The reason that all these other countries are building
solar-panel industries today is because most of their
governments have put in place the three perquisites for growing
a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can
generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power
utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has
to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a
no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the
solar panels on their rooftop.
Regulatory, price and connectivity certainty, that is what
Germany put in place, and that explains why Germany now
generates almost half the solar power in the world today and,
as a byproduct, is making itself the world-center for solar
research, engineering, manufacturing and installation. With
more than 50,000 new jobs, the renewable energy industry in
Germany is now second only to its auto industry. One thing that
has never existed in America — with our fragmented, stop-start
solar subsidies — is certainty of price, connectivity and
regulation on a national basis.
That is why, although consumer demand for solar power has
incrementally increased here, it has not been enough for anyone
to have Applied Materials — the world’s biggest solar equipment
manufacturer — build them a new factory in America yet. So,
right now, our federal and state subsidies for installing solar
systems are largely paying for the cost of importing solar
panels made in China, by Chinese workers, using hi-tech
manufacturing equipment invented in America.
["
Have a Nice Day",By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, New York Times,
September 16, 2009]
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