Solar Power Costs

Germany: Talk of the Cleantech Town this Week

13 years ago Zachary Shahan 3 Comments

Germany is all the talk lately. And for obvious reasons. It’s already a world leader in clean energy and now its decided to close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022 (as I reported a little more than a month ago). This has instigated political controversy, wild claims, clean energy enthusiasm, and a number of new reports. It has also helped to light a fire under other countries slower to react on the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan and slower to implement progressive clean energy policies to tackle catastrophic global climate change.

A number of stories focused on Germany have popped up this week that I thought I’d give a little extra attention to.

China to Double Solar Power Capacity Target to 10 GW by 2015

13 years ago Zachary Shahan 12 Comments

I just reported yesterday on a new report out by Ernst & Young showing that China is the most attractive country in the world for renewable energy investors. However, it wasn’t ranked as top for solar energy investment (was tied for third with Spain behind the US and India). That may change next time around (the report is released every quarter), as China is preparing to officially up its 2015 solar capacity target from 5 GW to 10 GW!

Small- AND Large-Scale Solar Needed

13 years ago Zachary Shahan 3 Comments

Well, I don’t think it will come as much surprise, but following up on a CleanTechnica post from last month on the merits of small-scale solar compared to large-scale solar, I thought I’d share parts of a new piece by Solar Energy Industries Association President & CEO Rhone Resch on why we need both (with a little commentary of my own)

New Flexible Solar Cell on Plastic Efficiency Record

13 years ago Zachary Shahan 1 Comment

Solar records are broken left and right. We can’t cover them all, of course, but try to cover the big ones. Recently, researchers ar Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, set a pretty big one. They increased the solar cell efficiency record of flexible solar cells made of copper indium gallium (di)selenide (aka CIGS) from 17.6% to 18.7%, a pretty significant increase.