China currently has 16% renewable energy. They want to grow that to 23% by 2020.
In order to speed up this program, they are giving a subsidy to residential scale solar installations. This ’solar roofs program’ subsidy has caused up to a 47% surge in various solar power stocks.
Right now, China is the world’s leading greenhouse gas emitter. This makes their government’s commitment to green energy even more important for our climate’s future.
The government will offer this year 20 yuan ($2.93) per
watt for solar projects with generating capacity of at least 50
kilowatts, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement posted
today on its Web site. |
“We believe meaningful upside potential exists if
government support for domestic solar sector continues,”
Barclays Plc analyst Vishal Shah wrote in a note to clients. |
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At the moment, solar panels are not efficient enough to power cars. That is, not conventional cars.
There is an annual solar desert race in Australia, but cars there benefit from constant sunshine. They also aim to keep a constant speed and not change direction much. This is very different from the usual way we drive cars in major cities.
However, as solar power continues to increase in efficiency, the possibilities for solar transport slowly inch closer.
The solar power in question with the Prius simply contributes to part of the air conditioning.
“It’s more of a symbolic gesture,” said the source, who asked not to be identified. “It’s very difficult to power much more than that with solar energy.” |
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Tags:solar panel prius·solar power prius
Barak Obama talks to the astronauts on the Space Shuttle Discovery in orbit around the earth.
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Astronauts on the space station had a tele conference with President Obama and a group of school children.
The president told the astronauts how much he admired the work they were doing. They had just finished installing a new array of solar panels that attached onto the space station.
This new power meant they could double the number of crew in orbit. Space travel was one of the original drivers to developing solar power. There are still some interesting schemes about harvesting solar energy from space. The main obstacle is cost and transporting the power back to earth.
“We’re investing back here on the ground a whole array of solar and other renewable energy projects and so to find out that you’re doing this up at the space station is particularly exciting,” Obama said. |
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First Solar has solar power plants in the US, Germany and Malaysia. They have reached this milestone, and are now looking to grow even more in the coming months and years.
1GW of energy a year is similar to that supplied by a normal sized nuclear power plant. What’s particularly significant is that half of First Solar’s growth has occurred in just the last 8 months.
Clearly there is a lot of demand for renewable energy. And as the volume of energy production increases, the price of solar energy goes down.
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