First Solar CEO Mike Ahearn went country by country on last week’s guidance call, pointing out an inverted “V” effect whereby incentive programs cause a spike in projects that then sharply plummets when the speed of market expansion alarms politicians and they pull subsidies. GigaOM Pro’s Green IT analyst Adam Lesser points out how First Solar just does not want to play that subsidy “whack-a-mole” game any more, in his weekly update.
First Solar was constantly going after the next subsidy market until these abruptly started to vanish, and now is shifting focus toward utilities. But by going whole hog into utility-scale projects, First Solar will have to get solar costs down to 10–14 cents per kilowatt-hour over the next few years if it wants to compete with coal and natural gas, which will require both efficiency gains and bringing down manufacturing costs.
Here’s what else Adam is thinking about and reading this week and make sure to check out GigaOM Pro’s Green IT section:
- Green data centers hold the key to better enterprise infrastructure: The article from eweek.com cites figures indicating that energy consumption in data centers will increase by 19 percent next year.
- 30 under 30: Forbes has put out its list of hot young innovators in energy. A lot of cleantech with some natural gas/deepwater drilling sprinkled in.
- Stop the solar trade war: The Executive Director of Columbia’s Earth Institute, Steven Cohen, argues that a looming trade war with China over solar would stifle the growing solar power industry.
- Biofuels face a reality check: While the original goal had been 500 million gallons of biofuels produced in 2012, that has been rolled back to 12 million gallons as progress has been much slower than expected

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