MOVING ON ITALIAN SOLAR – AN F-I-T TOO GOOD TO REFUSE

With Spain backing off its excessively generous feed-in tariff (FiT) and Germany’s digression rate kicking in, the new frontier for growth in the European market could be Italy. Clearly financier CERTUS Life Cycle AG (CLC) of Germany thinks so.

To go to work developing the Italian market, CLC did its due diligence and picked Canadian solar installation specialist Day4 Energy, a company with a proprietary panel installation technology and a chain of partners anxious to go to installing sun.

No word yet on the first projects.

The Campobello di Mazara Council of Trapani, Sicily, IS building a solar installation - on land it confiscated from a local mafia boss. The council will sell the power generated by the Sicilian sun to the Italian national gird and use the revenues to fund small and family enterprises and arts and crafts projects by victims of the Mafia and of workplace accidents.

Ciro Carava, mayor, Campobello di Mazara: ''In place of abandoned villas and farmland we're providing development…The money will be put into a municipal fund to finance small businesses run by families who have lost relatives to the Mob or been the victims of extortion rackets…''

Footnote: Confiscated Cosa Nostra dons' trophy villas and hideaway farms across the Sicilain countryside now grow honest agriculatural produce. Youth coops in the rural crime triangle between the fiefs of Corleone, Monreale and San Giuseppe Jato make pasta, olive oil, wine and honey sold in Coop supermarkets all over Italy.

One of the youth coops is named Placido Rizzotto - Libera Terra after a land reform campaigner murdered by the Mafia in 1948.

Corleone, the town in the hills near Palermo made famous in The Godfather, was where Cosa Nostra don Toto 'the Beast' Riina and his next-generation Mafiosi reigned in the '70s and '80s. Riina’s Corleone luxury apartments are now the headquarters of the local tax police.

Italy's new feed-in tariff is an offer the world's solar industry can't refuse. (click to enlarge)

Day4 Energy Offers Turnkey Solution to Solar Power Investors
August 28, 2008 (Day$ Energy/PR Newswire via Fox Business)
and
Italy: Council to create solar energy on former Mafia land
27 August 2008 (Adnkronos International)
and
Solar Panels on Mafia Land
28 August 2008 (Italy Magazine)

WHO
Day4 Energy Inc. (Day4); CERTUS Life Cycle AG (CLC) (Bernd Sibold, CEO); Nunzio Spezia, Mafia boss, Trapani, Sicily; The Campobello di Mazara Council of Trapani

WHAT
Day4 and CLC will partner to develop investor funded photovoltaic (PV) power projects in Europe, especially Italy. Trapani will build solar panels on land confiscated from Spezia.

Italy has the sun. Especially Sicily. (click to enlarge)

WHEN
- Italy currently produces less than 5% of its electricity from New Energy sources. There is no report on when the Trapani installation will go online or when the CLC/Day4 Energy projects will begin but they indicate that Italy’s national grid soon be carrying a lot more solar energy-generated electricity.
- The Campobello di Mazara Council solar project was announced August 27.

WHERE
- CLC is based in Freiburg, Germany.
- Day4 is based near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
- Trapani, a small town in the west of Sicily.

WHY
- CLC has specialized in insurance investments and recently moved into PV power projects.
- Day4 will be responsible for modules and system integration; CLC will commission and fund the projects.
- Day4 designs, manufactures and sells PV modules using its patented, proprietary Day4 Electrode technology, a method of connecting solar cells that produces high power density, increased lifetime, aesthetically appealing solar panels.
- The Campobello di Mazara Council says its solar installation will cost 1.850 million euros, will be partially funded by the Italian interior ministry and the EU, will be made up of 1,320 panels and will generate 510,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.
- Italian authorities have made a point of using confiscated Mafia property for public institutions.

Italy could use some more New Energy in its energy mix. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Bernd Sibold, CEO, CLC: "Having undergone a significant amount of due diligence we feel that Day4 Energy's ability to combine the installation expertise of its channel partners with superior field performance of Day4 Electrode modules creates a highly attractive investment proposition for our investors."
- George Rubin, president, Day4 Energy: "I am excited about this strategic co-operation with CLC…to create numerous project opportunities for Day4 Energy and its channel partners…Solar energy is the business of pre-paid electrical power…financing is an integral part of the solution that also includes technology, system design and installation. We already have industry leading module technology and our channel partners are the best PV system experts in the field…"