Solar Benefits from Clean Tech Enthusiasm

For this week and next week, the news services will focus on the Democratic and Republican conventions, respectively. From now until Election Day, observers can expect to see discussion of climate change policies and technologies attached firmly to discussion of the relative merits of Barack Obama and John McCain’s energy proposals.

In one of the last splashes that will be free from this, Palo Alto-based company Nanosolar has released some staggering numbers from a spring drive, indicating that it will have $300 million to pour into thin-film solar research. The money has come from a consortium of investors, and fits into a recent enthusiasm for investment in clean tech. This enthusiasm for clean technology, as highlighted throughout financial publications over the last few years, has two prominent drivers: an awareness of the crucial stakes of the struggle against climate change, and, more importantly, the understanding that this is the way of the future, and it’s better to be in at the ground floor.

I led off with the convention season because the disparity between public sector and private sector judgment and action regarding these technologies could not be more disparate. The current U.S. administration has simply not taken necessary action on climate change, for whatever reasons, and this has compelled a bottom-up effort get things moving. But both top-down and bottom-up initiatives and financial support will be necessary in the upcoming years, especially in recasting the infrastructure of the country towards a cleaner future. The government must play a more prominent role, beginning with the renewal of measures like the solar tax credit and culminating in more broad legislation to address nationwide carbon emissions.

I only hope that whichever nominee rides their convention to victory in November will remember that.