SOLAR SOARING

From Leah Krauss, one of my favorite writers:

Solar World: A sunny 2006 for solar
Leah Krauss, December 29, 2006 (UPI)
- The past year has seen landmark legislative support for solar in the United States; testing on the world's largest solar dish in Israel; and the announcement of solar projects in locations as far-flung as Central America, southeast Asia and Africa.

- And despite high prices driven by demand for silicon, the main ingredient in most solar panels, solar energy firms sported big gains in the stock market and in their quarterly earnings reports.
- Perhaps the most dramatic developments in the global solar energy industry happened in the United States in 2006. The country that uses most of the world's energy finally put its efforts behind a comprehensive renewable energy program as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which took effect January 1, 2006. Though many individual states already had tax breaks for solar in place, the Energy Policy Act introduced the first federal solar tax credit, encouraging businesses and homeowners to put photovoltaic panels on their roofs and to start using the sun to heat their water…
- Rhone Resch, the president of the Washington, DC-based Solar Energy Industries Association, told United Press International that getting Congress to enact sweeping solar incentive programs was the "No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 priority" for the industry in 2007. The association has hired a tax lobby firm, plans to increase its staff and its grass roots campaign, and to pour money into a media budget in the coming year…
- solar industry growth in [Germany] is slowing, but still leads the world…

- Solar technology also saw several important developments, such as increased interest in ultra-thin photovoltaic material through nanotechnology, and new efficiency records in concentrator photovoltaic technology…Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab announced that it had surpassed the 40-percent mark for concentrator photovoltaics -- a development that some compared to the athletic signifigance of running the first-ever four-minute mile…
- Several publicly traded solar companies -- including United Solar's parent company, Energy Conversion Devices -- gained more than 100 percent on the markets in 2005, and 2006 is likely to be an equally profitable year…

- In an article for Renewable Energy Access, [J. Peter Lynch, a financial consultant and an expert on the renewable energy industry] compared the average growth of seven public solar companies and one "clean energy" company with the average growth of three well-known indices: the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the NASDAQ.
- The indices gained an average of 1.25 percent. The solar companies, on the other hand, grew by an average of 134 percent…DayStar Technologies posted 332 percent growth for 2005, Evergreen Solar gained 213 percent and Distributed Energy Systems Corp. rose 160 percent…