“Without these subsidies … ‘On-grid PV,’ would be virtually non-existent. It only exists because the solar industry lobbied government officials to compel citizens to purchase this otherwise non-economic energy source.”
“Included in the list of failed solar companies is Solon of Germany whose corporate slogan was ‘Don’t Leave the Planet to the Stupid.’ Fortunately for taxpayers, it appears Solon will be leaving the planet.”
A recent Wall Street Journal article, Dark Times Fall on Solar Sector(December 27, 2011), surveyed the latest solar industry fallout, as well as overviewed the financial condition of the surviving companies.
But the article seems to mistakenly equate the fallout to viability as if better profits would mean sustainability. The industry is not viable, but this is unrelated to the recent fall-out. The industry was growing and profitable in the recent past and was equally non-viable then.…
Continue ReadingCreative destruction , a term popularized by Joseph Schumpeter, is the market process whereby bad is eliminated, the better replaces the good, and past performance gives way to new strategies and victors. No firm is forever, and financial loss is a characteristic of capitalism, as is the more used term profit.
Energy is the story of creative destruction. Coal gas and later coal oil replaced a variety of animal and vegetable oils, including whale oil, camphene oil, and stearin oil. Crude (mineral) oil then displaced manufactured (coal) oil, just as later natural gas would displace manufactured (coal) gas.
Coal itself displaced primitive biomass (burned plants and wood) and other forms of renewable energy, such as falling water and wind. Fossil fuel was a concentrated, continuous-burn industrial-grade energy.
The intensity of fossil energy can be understood as a stock of the sun’s work over the ages, not a dilute flow from the sun (solar, wind)–or a low-density mass from limited years of sunshine (biomass).…
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