December 2008

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) outlined this week the key policies that President-elect Obama and the Congressional leadership must address to expand the use of solar energy and help put over 1 million Americans back to work by 2011.

HelioPower Technicians Onsite for Solar Ground Mount Project in 2006

SEIA released "Solar Energy: A Blueprint for Job Creation and Economic Security," which recommends that the new Administration and Congress embrace the following policies and programs to expand the creation of clean energy jobs in the United States: Improve solar tax credits; Increase government procurement of solar power; Create tax incentives for manufacturing; Pass a national renewable portfolio standard with a solar provision; Expand and update transmission infrastructure; Improve access to federal lands to harness our vast solar resources; Create a federal Clean Energy Bank; Create the office of Renewable Energy Development; Establish national standards for interconnection and net metering; Increase DOE Solar Appropriations and Enact climate legislation to reduce carbon emissions, stimulate solar generation.

SEIA President Rhone Resch said, "President-elect Obama and the new Congress have expressed their commitment to addressing our current economic crisis. Increasing the use of solar energy will create millions of new jobs and put billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, providing a clean, reliable and domestic source of energy while providing a clean, reliable and domestic source of energy,.

"The growth of solar energy will not happen quickly enough without the right federal policies to stimulate the market and remove fundamental barriers that prevent solar from competing in the electricity marketplace.

"To stimulate this growth, the Solar Energy Industries Association is recommending to the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress a number of immediate and near-term policies to stimulate the growth of solar energy, including: improving the solar investment tax credits to ensure that they can be utilized as Congress originally intended, creating a government procurement program that deploys solar on federal buildings and lands, and establishing a national renewable portfolio standard that requires a specific amount of energy come from solar.

"We look forward to working with the new Administration and the 111th Congress to achieve these important goals for growing our economy, improving our energy independence and reducing global warming."

SEIA Board Chairman Roger Efird of Suntech America said, "For solar energy to reach its potential as an economic engine and become an important part of our national energy portfolio, we need government leaders to continue to enact the right policies. These policies, especially in the current economic crisis, will allow companies like mine to grow and create green jobs that will reverse the trend of sending American jobs overseas. Instead, the U.S. can become a destination for international companies to find the skilled professionals they need to compete in the global renewable energy economy."

SEIA's will deliver the "Solar Energy: A Blueprint for Job Creation and Economic Security" to each member of President-elect Obama's energy and economic transition teams and Congressional leadership.

SEIA is comprised of over 800 member companies that manufacture, distribute, sell, design, own, install and finance solar power plants and systems.

Fast Company Magazine writer and author of Geography of Hope, a global survey of sustainable technology, Chris Turner logged an excellent review of the solar industry.  Entitled, "The Solar Industry Gains Ground – And Goes Global" you can find the full story online.  

Here is an excerpt:

To get a sense of just how bright and sunshiny the future looks to the solar-energy industry, consider The Graph: It's a standard affair, projecting solar's share of global energy production over the coming century. The Graph was created by a scientific organization that counsels the German government, but it has since become a prized piece of propaganda, embedded in glossy brochures and PowerPoint presentations by solar companies from California to gray-skied Saxony. At the left-hand, present-tense end of the scale, solar power is a microscopic pencil line of gold against the thick, dark bands of oil and natural gas and coal, an accurate representation of the 0.04% of the world's electricity produced by solar power as of 2006. The band grows slowly thicker for 20 years or so, and then around 2040 a dramatic inversion occurs. The mountain-peak lines indicating the various fossil fuels all fall steeply away, leaving a widening maw of golden light as solar power expands to fill the space. By 2060, solar power is the largest single band, and by 2100 it is by far the majority share.

This has always been solar energy's tantalizing promise, since the first photovoltaic (PV) cells emerged out of Bell Labs in the 1950s to power space probes and ignite the dreams of a generation of giddy utopian dreamers. Solar energy is as plentiful as daylight, as limitless as organic life itself, a fuel that comes free of charge and replenishes itself every time the earth rotates on its axis. Almost all energy, after all, is ultimately stored solar power: Oil, gas, and coal were born of the ancient sunlight that fed prehistoric animals and plants, the wind is set howling by the sun's unequal heating of the atmosphere, and even a campfire draws its warmth from solar power trapped long ago through photosynthesis. Enough radiation from the massive fusion reactor at the center of our solar system hits the earth every hour to fill all of its energy needs for a year.