It’s a Big World Out there
Two articles caught my attention this morning. The first is by Roger Cohen at NYT about Brazil’s exciting economic growth. How about this number
Foreign direct investment has grown at a compound rate of 26 percent over the past five years and reached close to $48.5 billion in 2010.
The second is by Katy Daigle at HuffPo about the growing use of solar power to provide electricity to India’s rural poor. Did you know that
… 40 percent of India’s rural households lack … electricity and nearly a third of its 30 million agricultural water pumps run … on subsidized diesel
A growth market for cheap Chinese solar panels? Of course, we are still at the early stages of figuring out how to make really cheap and efficient solar panels. Good Environment reports on a breakthrough on cost reduction — printing CIGS onto a panel using an ink jet device. But there is a hitch. The efficiency rating for ink jet CIGS panels so far is very low (around 2%). Currently, the most efficient silicon based panels in production are converting around 20% of the sunlight they capture into electricity. Back to the drawing board!