The clean tech green energy sector is hurting badly – along with the rest of our economy. A lot of promising new firms are on life support finding it very difficult to raise desperately needed venture capital. We need to be laying the foundations for future growth now and there is no time to waste, I would argue that this is a paramount issue of national security, that it is not just about jobs or being “green”, but that it is an urgently vital necessity for our country’s future security. This is not an optional choice; it is not a luxury, a nice to have kind of thing; this is the very life blood of our country, of our industrial society. An industrial society needs energy and lots of it. America needs to urgently begin a national crash program of investing in domestically controlled renewable energy supplies, such as wind and solar right now while we still have a little breathing room to begin laying the foundations for a new American energy economy. It is a matter of national security.
Earlier this month, First Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR) announced that it has reduced its manufacturing cost for solar modules in the fourth quarter 2009 to 98 cents per watt, becoming the first solar cell manufacturing company to break the $1 per watt price barrier. This is a major price milestone for the solar photovoltaic manufacturing sector and represents a significant step towards achieving what is known in the industry as as grid parity, the price level where the per watt cost for solar electricity reaches the current averaged cost of electricity on the grid a goal First Solar plans to reach by 2012.
