The Clean Tech Revolution
The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity
Chapter One
Solar Energy
Scaling Up Manufacturing and Driving Down Costs
Above the tree-lined streets of Pasadena, California, in the sleek, open-air offices of high-tech start-up incubator Idealab, a team of researchers is huddled around a strange-looking device that concentrates the light of the sun and generates on-site electricity. Bill Gross, Idealab's founder and the CEO of upstart concentrating-solar PV company Energy Innovations, beams with the nerdy excitement of a computer programmer who's just created a nifty chunk of code or a biologist who's uncovered a new genome. "The economic potential for solar is enormous," says Gross. "Within a decade, solar will reach price parity with other energy sources." His vision is to replicate Idealab's rooftop, where a dozen solar-concentrator demo units track the sun from dawn to dusk. He wants Energy Innovations units sprouting on commercial and industrial roofs around the world, providing low-cost, efficient, distributed electric power from the sun.
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