Economic Recession hits Solar Power, but there's hope...

Following up on my article on Sharp Corp. and it's solar power focus, I was reading a few articles in the NY Times about solar power. The recession has taken quite a toll on solar companies, which were growing very rapidly over the past few years - according to this article on the Green Inc. NY Times blog, Cleantech investments jumped from $270 million to over $4 billion from 2003 to 2008.

A lot of it is due to the credit freeze, which is drying up the necessary capital that wind and solar power companies relied on in the past to keep going. While Obama's plans for a green America are in the works, and while he's dedicated $83 billion in tax credits and cleantech spending in his stimulus bill, the effects of those actions won't be felt until much later. At present, these companies are starting to cut back and layoff workers in order to stay afloat.

Some solar companies like Ausra, had big plans like creating thousands of solar power plants that would supply the United States with clean power, but now they're turning more towards steam generation to supply existing power plants and industries with steam.

Luckily, there is still some progress being made. I was reading this article about how another solar company called FirstSolar made a breakthrough in their development process of its solar modules from $3 per watt to $1 per watt, which could be huge once this recession blows over and people start getting back on track in finding ways to more efficiently use solar power.

There has also been speculation that Obama is considering using solar panels in the White House.

By the way, I had no idea that the Carter installed solar panels when he was president, or that the panels were later taken down by Reagan - which makes sense...Reagan was no friend to alternative energy or the environment. But what was most surprising was that there were additional solar panels added in 2003 under George W. Bush.

Sharp Corporation is awesome

I realized that my last two posts were about cars. I have to admit that I really know nothing about them, though I do find alternative energy vehicles fascinating. So, I've decided to step away from cars and turn to solar power.

During one of my phases when I started investing some of my savings in the stock market, I started looking for companies that were researching and developing innovative alternative energy sources, particularly solar power. After all the sun puts out so much energy, so if we find a way to efficiently harness and capture that energy, it would mean nearly limitless power that has minimal impact on the environment.

One of my research binges led me to Sharp Corp. Sharp has been involved with photovoltaic cell production for years, and their corporate vision for a green future is amazing - they are essentially trying to balance out their emissions through the carbon reduction through the development and sales of their photovoltaic cells by 2010. Not only that, but the long-term objectives they've set for themselves in order to become a greener company are extremely impressive, especially their target of making green devices account for 90% of their sales by 2010, converting all their production sites to be grade B green factories or higher, and using 1,400 tons of recycled plastic in their products by 2010.

I'm not sure how far they can expect to go given the state of the economy around the world, but the very fact that they have set such goals is amazing. The cool thing is, they publish lots of data on their progress towards achieving their goals: CO2 emissions, number of green products, amount of water used, amount of waste created, etc.

What's more, Sharp has started outfitting production facilities with solar cells and other clean technologies (molten-carbonate fuel cells and co-generation systems that use city gas to generate electricity and waste heat, which is used to power the air conditioning and hot water), and they've started recycling programs for used electrical products in a lot of countries.

You can check out the entire eco section of their website here