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http://abcnews.go.com/Business/GadgetGuide/story?id=4293368&page=1
Amidst all of the gloomy – or, at best, hesitant – corporate financial news of the last few weeks, one industry sector literally seems aglow: solar. And therein lies an interesting morality – or more accurately, amorality – tale.
Just this week, First Solar Inc., a Phoenix-based solar module manufacturer with a design center in Ohio and a big manufacturing plant in Germany, announced spectacular quarterly numbers. For the fourth quarter, company earnings were $63 million, up nearly 800 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Meanwhile, revenues only quadrupled to $201 million. Not surprisingly, company stock jumped 30 percent, to nearly $230, on the news.
You can generally tell when a technology is about to take off: a lot of companies get into the field, and a lot of money is made on it. Witness everything from the transition of PCs from hobby items to every day ones, or mp3 players from the primitive machines in 1998 to the vast industry they are now. If solar panels are at the point where profitability is not only possible, but reasonable to attain in a year or four (the article mentions many start-ups and such), then that means manufacturing costs are low enough that you can generate enough electricity to actually pay for the panel in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. you'll get the amount of energy it took to make the panel back from it in a short time frame, say 10 years).
And that's a good thing.
Link from the InstaPundit.
Amidst all of the gloomy – or, at best, hesitant – corporate financial news of the last few weeks, one industry sector literally seems aglow: solar. And therein lies an interesting morality – or more accurately, amorality – tale.
Just this week, First Solar Inc., a Phoenix-based solar module manufacturer with a design center in Ohio and a big manufacturing plant in Germany, announced spectacular quarterly numbers. For the fourth quarter, company earnings were $63 million, up nearly 800 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Meanwhile, revenues only quadrupled to $201 million. Not surprisingly, company stock jumped 30 percent, to nearly $230, on the news.
You can generally tell when a technology is about to take off: a lot of companies get into the field, and a lot of money is made on it. Witness everything from the transition of PCs from hobby items to every day ones, or mp3 players from the primitive machines in 1998 to the vast industry they are now. If solar panels are at the point where profitability is not only possible, but reasonable to attain in a year or four (the article mentions many start-ups and such), then that means manufacturing costs are low enough that you can generate enough electricity to actually pay for the panel in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. you'll get the amount of energy it took to make the panel back from it in a short time frame, say 10 years).
And that's a good thing.
Link from the InstaPundit.