Word: solarization
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With oil prices heading toward $70 a barrel, the age of the solar panel is dawning at last, and electronics companies from the land of the rising sun are leading the way. Decades of money-losing research and development are finally paying off at Japanese electronics giants like Sharp, Sanyo, Mitsubishi and Kyocera, who together control about 50% of the global market. "The solar units of these companies are already real businesses, and they are only going to become larger parts of their operations," says Yuki Sugi, a Lehman Bros. analyst in Tokyo who covers Sharp and Sanyo...
Sharp, the world's market leader, sold more than $1 billion worth of solar panels last year and expects a 28% increase this year. Sanyo expects a 60% sales increase this year, and at Kyocera, solar panels account for 5% of the company's total sales and 12% of its operating profit. "Solar is a booming business," says Sharp president Katsuhiko Machida, "and it is one of our core targets for growth...
...With few oil resources of its own, Japan has long made alternative-fuel research and conservation national priorities. Meanwhile, electronics companies have been deeply interested in the power management of their devices and in silicon-based materials like computer chips?technologies at the heart of silicon solar-panel manufacturing. Unlike in other countries, where oil and gas companies tend to research solar energy, electronics companies here have no other energy divisions to worry about compromising. In Japan panel companies and the national government kick-started solar-power adoption with subsidies. A consumer who installs a solar-panel array...
True cost competitiveness is within reach. Panel costs have fallen 66% over the past decade. Company executives and outside analysts estimate that a further 50% reduction, which would make solar-powered-electricity costs comparable with other types of fuel, is possible within the next decade. And because natural-gas and coal prices are increasing along with oil prices, the cost competitiveness of solar power could come a lot earlier...
DIED. JOHN BAHCALL, 70, avuncular astrophysicist whose pioneering work helped explain why the sun shines; of a rare blood disorder; in New York City. In addition to solar physics, Bahcall was a forceful proponent of the Hubble Space Telescope, despite the program's many early glitches. "We can take pride in an achievement that no other nation could even consider," he told TIME in 1995, describing the Hubble as being "like our pyramids--but a whole lot more important...