Tag Archives: development

Even the World Bank Has to Worry About the Competition

by CarltonDecosta Posted on April 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has just published a deep look into the World Bank’s track record of ensuring that the projects it sponsors don’t end up harming local communities.

Since 2004, more than 3.4 million people have been economically or physically displaced by Bank projects, according to the report’s analysis of the lender’s data. And while the Bank has policies requiring it to reestablish and resettle such communities, the ICIJ’s investigation found that they were falling short, operating under a troubling lack of safeguards, through bank officials too willing to ignore abuses committed by local partners, and with an institutional culture that values closing big deals over following up on human rights.

After being presented with the ICIJ’s findings, the bank quickly promised reforms. But one part of the investigation contains this interesting passage, which suggests an unexpected reason the Bank may not be able to clean up its act: competition has gotten too stiff.

As it enters its eighth decade, the World Bank faces an identity crisis.

It is no longer the only lender willing to venture into struggling nations and finance huge projects. It is being challenged by new competition from other development banks that don’t have the same social standards—and are rapidly drawing support from the World Bank’s traditional backers.

China has launched a new development bank and persuaded Britain, Germany and other American allies to join, despite open U.S. opposition.

These geopolitical shifts have fueled doubts about whether the World Bank still has the clout—or the desire—to impose strong protections for people living in the way of development.

United Nations human rights officials have written World Bank President Kim to say they’re concerned that the growing ability of borrowers to access other financing has spurred the bank to join a “race to the bottom” and push its standards for protecting people even lower.

Today’s package of stories, published with the Huffington Post, is the first installment of a series reported in 14 countries by over 50 journalists. More than 20 news organizations were involved in the effort.

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Even the World Bank Has to Worry About the Competition

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Eric Holder Ends Horrible Civil Asset Forfeiture Program

by WilburAguiar Posted on January 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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I was getting better over the weekend, then yesterday I relapsed back into coughing fits. And today is a holiday anyway, so probably blogging will be light. But I hate to let this development from last Friday continue to go unremarked:

Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday announced sweeping changes to a federal civil asset forfeiture program that local law enforcement agencies have been able to use to seize property.

….Under new rules announced Friday, federal agencies will no longer be able to accept or “adopt” assets seized by local and state law enforcement agencies — unless the property includes firearms, ammunitions, explosives, child pornography or other materials concerning public safety. Holder described the new policy as the “first step in a comprehensive review.”

This is a big deal. Civil asset forfeiture allows police departments to seize property—usually money and cars—from people they merely suspect of a crime. No conviction is necessary, and victims have no recourse unless they have the means to sue to recover their property. All by itself this has been a scandal for a long time, but the federal program Holder eliminated has been the biggest scandal of all. It’s bad enough that civil asset forfeiture even exists as a legal doctrine, but it’s beyond comprehension that the feds would actively encourage abuse of forfeiture laws by creating a program that allows police departments to keep most of the money they seize. This is practically an invitation to steal money from innocent people.

So good for Holder for ending this program. If cops are going to be allowed to seize property from people they merely suspect of crimes—or, in some cases, pretend to suspect of crimes, wink wink nudge nudge—they sure as hell shouldn’t be allowed to keep the stuff and sell it in order to buy themselves a bunch of shiny new toys. The possibilities for abuse are obvious and have been well documented. We’re well shut of this horrible program.

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Eric Holder Ends Horrible Civil Asset Forfeiture Program

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We have to build much smarter cities if we want to fight climate change

by ChanceKunkle Posted on January 13, 2015

We have to build much smarter cities if we want to fight climate change

By on 13 Jan 2015commentsShare

If we can develop better cities, we can make a big dent in future greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the gist of a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The 274 cities researchers looked at are going to need more energy as they grow — a lot more, especially if we continue on our current track. The cities’ energy needs are poised to triple between 2005 and 2050 — but, with forward-thinking urban and transportation planning, we could limit those energy needs so they’ll only double.

The type of city determines how best to proceed. And in the world’s many developing countries, the study finds, keeping cities compact and carefully structuring their transportation systems is crucial. At Climate Central, John Upton explains:

Of the overall opportunity to reduce projected urban energy use by 2050, which the researchers called the urbanization mitigation wedge, 57 percent was found to be in Asia. Another 29 percent was in Africa and the Middle East.

Improving urban and transportation planning in countries where the very concepts are often foreign would, experts agreed, be challenging. It’s common in developing countries for rickety homes and businesses to be built on underused land without obtaining permits or permission, resulting in sprawl that’s underserviced by sewer lines, roads and other infrastructure.

“In India, there is no urban form,” said Anshuman Khare, a sustainable development professor at Canada’s Athabasca University who grew up in India and has also worked and studied in Japan and Germany. “You look at Asia and say, ‘OK, what has to change there?’ I can’t say what has to change, because everything has to change.”

Evidence from China, where some cities, such as Shanghai, have been working to introduce Western-style transportation plans, suggest that the challenges could be surmountable, said Michael Replogle, the policy director at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, which helps cities around the world with transportation planning. Overcoming those challenges may require intensive assistance from foreign countries and cities where urban planning and building codes are taken for granted.

For cities in developed countries, the study says high gas prices could nudge future development in the right direction. Too bad those are gone now, yesterday’s news, from back when you were chuckling at Gangnam Style and, like, Doge.

And even if high gas prices return, the study’s authors suggest there’s little remedy for the most sprawling cities, many of which are here in America, where cars are more or less a necessity. The hope is that cities in developing countries will avoid making the same mistakes.

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We have to build much smarter cities if we want to fight climate change

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A Quick Note About the Future

by LannyCurtiss Posted on January 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jus a quick note before I move on to another subject this morning. A fair number of comments to my list of predictions yesterday suggested that it made for pretty depressing reading. But I suspect that might have been due to my tone more than the actual content of the predictions themselves. There’s a bit of fuzziness here, but here’s how I’d classify them:

Basically positive: 1, 2, 5, 9, 11, 13
Neutral-ish: 4, 8, 10, 14
Basically negative: 3, 6, 7, 12, 15, 16

Obviously there’s room for debate here. For example, I count the development of artificial intelligence (#1) as a positive development, but I do concede that it will either “transform or destroy” the world. (The case for destroying the world is here.) On the neutralish side, you might think that super social media (#8) sounds great, not neutral, and if you’re Russian or Chinese you won’t think much of #14. On the negative side, the stagnation of manned space travel (#12) might strike you as a yawn, and although any kind of biological attack is bad (#16), I pretty much think we’ll be able to contain this threat.

In any case, you can argue about my categories. Still, I think by any fair measure I ended up with a roughly an even mix of good and bad, and that’s just the way the world is. If you made a similar list for 1900-1950 but did it in hindsight, you’d get electrification, mass-produced cars, and penicillin, but you’d also get the Great Depression, two massive world wars, the start of the Cold War, and the invention of nuclear bombs. It was hardly all roses.

I suspect that for most of us alive today, our attitudes are skewed by growing up in the period from 1950-2000. But this is the anomaly: obviously there was some bad stuff during this era, but the good far outweighed it. On a broad scale, it was almost certainly the most progressive and innovative half-century in human history. After all, we might have been bristling with nuclear weapons, but we never ended up using them, did we? And we made massive material and social progress around the globe, but didn’t yet have any big worries about climate change or terrorism. In hindsight, most of our fears turned out to be modest, while our progress was unprecedented. It’s possible that the period from 2000-2050 will repeat that, but at the very least I think the dangers of the next few decades are both real and deserve consideration.

For what it’s worth, though, virtually everything hinges on two things: the development of benign artificial intelligence and the development of clean, abundant energy. If we manage those two things, the world will be bright indeed.

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A Quick Note About the Future

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Climate Change Takes A Village

by Myrna Posted on December 16, 2014

As the Planet Warms, a Remote Alaskan Town Shows Just How Unprepared We Are. It’s obvious that something is wrong in Shishmaref. Kate Sheppard/The Huffington Post The cockeyed wooden building visible upon landing in Shishmaref belongs to Tony Weyiouanna Sr., 55, who uses it to preserve fish and render seal oil. Weyiouanna is the president of the board of the Shishmaref Native Corporation, which manages the land and resources allocated to the community under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. When the village first voted to relocate, he was tasked with heading up the effort as the technical staff assistant for the relocation coalition, which included representatives from the city council, the native government and the native corporation. At the time, Weyiouanna was working as the transportation planner for Kawerak, the regional economic and social development association, where he dealt with roads and other public works projects. Transportation planning is one thing. Planning to move a town is another. “I was like, ‘How the heck am I going to do this?’” remembers Weyiouanna. We’re sitting at his kitchen table drinking coffee as he recalls the relocation effort’s early days. He pauses occasionally to check a reindeer roast in the oven, and the smell, rich and earthy, fills the small house. One of his three children lounges on the couch in the adjoining living room, watching television. The coalition put together a detailed action plan, laying out for the community and for state and federal agencies what an “orderly relocation” would entail. Step one was to identify high-potential relocation sites, sizeable enough to accommodate the town’s growing population, with access to land and water and the hunting and fishing grounds on which the residents’ ancestors had relied for generations. The geography, hydrology and environmental suitability of the sites would be studied. The town would determine infrastructure needs for the new community, like an airport, roads, a clinic and a school. Finally, they would salvage what they could from Shishmaref and clean up the island after they left. Read the rest at The Huffington Post. Link:  Climate Change Takes A Village ; ; ;

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Climate Change Takes A Village

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Walmart Sets Its Sights on Africa—With Uncle Sam’s Help

by marques458 Posted on August 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, the second day of this week’s three-day US-Africa Leaders Summit, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon shared the main stage with the CEOs of General Electric and Dow Chemical. Sitting on a panel moderated by Bill Clinton, he talked about how his company was working with farmers to grow food to sell in its stores, and even export back to the United States and United Kingdom. “As we look at what we’re trying to do in Africa, we are simply trying to provide customers access to fresh produce and other items at a great value,” McMillon said. “To do that, we got to have a great supply chain.”

Yet Walmart isn’t building that supply chain alone—it’s getting a boost from the US government. At the close of the summit—which saw more than 50 African heads of state and government and 100-plus US and African businesses (and more than a few of their lobbyists) pack into a Washington, DC, hotel to plan the future of US-Africa relations—Walmart vice president Maggie Sans announced that the company and its foundation had pledged $3 million to train 135,000 farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, and Zambia, including 80,000 women. The funds will expand existing projects organized by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the consultancy Agribusiness Systems International, and the nonprofit organizations Global Communities and the One Acre Fund to develop farm-to-market supply chains. Under the program, Kenyan farmers can expect to see their incomes double in a single growing season, Sans said.

Walmart and USAID have worked together before. Beginning in 2007, the agency partnered with Walmart, TransFair (an independent certifier of fair-trade imports), and SEBRAE (a Brazilian nonprofit) to train 5,000 farmers in Brazil to improve the quality of their coffee crop to sell at Walmart stores. In 2011, USAID joined with a Guatemalan nonprofit and Walmart’s Mexican and Central American arm to connect farmers benefiting from a USAID program to boost production to the company’s supply chain. The agency helped train small farmers in Honduras and Guatemala to grow potatoes and onions that fit Walmart’s specifications, and Walmart provided a place to sell them.

A Marko store in Johannesburg, South Africa, part of the Massmart brand, which was purchased by Walmart in 2011 Themba Hadebe/AP

Produce is the central component of Walmart’s expansion into Africa, which began in 2011, when Walmart bought a majority share of the South African-based Massmart chain for $2.4 billion. At the time, Massmart had almost 300 stores in 14 African countries, according to Bloomberg. By August 2013, Massmart had almost 360 African stores, and Walmart announced plans to build 90 more, with a “focus on fresh food,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Three weeks later, Walmart, the Walmart Foundation, and USAID signed a memorandum of understanding with the aim of forming a voluntary partnership between the parties, focusing on climate change, farmer training, and agriculture, among other priorities.

USAID administrator Rajiv Shah acknowledged in a 2012 interview with Foreign Policy that working with Walmart was necessary, even if the choice wasn’t universally embraced. “Over the last several decades, it’s been controversial to have companies like Walmart in the development solution,” he said. “I think it is the kind of long-term development program that is needed to succeed at scale over time.”

Shah went further at a speech at the University of Arkansas, shortly after signing the memorandum at Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville: “We want to bring Walmart’s core capabilities in philanthropy and business to every part of the world to transform the face of hunger and poverty,” he said. “To end poverty, childhood deaths, and hunger, we need to bring together businesses with supply chains for partnership to reach the farthest corners of the globe.”

While supermarket chains in Africa may benefit the farmers who supply them, not everyone is convinced that expanding their customer base will end hunger. In 2013, World Bank researchers found that the richest fifth of the population of Zambia accounted for two-thirds of all the country’s supermarket sales; the bottom 60 percent accounted for only 12 percent. A year earlier, geographers Bill Moseley, Stephen Peyton, and Jane Battersby compiled a database of supermarkets and population distribution in the Cape Town, South Africa, area that showed that supermarket density was 16 times higher in upper-middle-income neighborhoods than in the poorest areas.

Despite the disparity, poor and urban residents interviewed for the study said they preferred to shop at supermarkets when they could since they stocked higher-quality food. The problem was that the poorest customers had irregular incomes and often lacked refrigerators at home, meaning they could only purchase food in small quantities, which is easier at local shops than at supermarkets selling bulk and packaged goods.

“Supermarket expansion is neither a solution to, nor a curse on, hunger alleviation efforts in urban South Africa and the region more broadly,” the researchers wrote in an Al Jazeera op-ed. “This market-oriented solution to improving urban food access is inherently limited because it just cannot meet the needs of the poorest of the poor.”

Whoever its future customers will be in Africa, Walmart says it’s ready to meet them. “Everywhere we operate, we find our customers have so much in common,” McMillon said. “Our customers in Africa want to spend less on everyday needs so they can provide more for their families. We want to help.”

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Walmart Sets Its Sights on Africa—With Uncle Sam’s Help

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Friday Cat Blogging – 1 August 2014

by OVZBerndwnfro Posted on August 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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Domino’s new favorite snoozing spot is the closet in our master bedroom. Naturally, knowing that everyone would want to be kept up to date on this development, I took a picture. Unfortunately, it turns out that cameras need a stream of photons to work properly, and the inside of a closet doesn’t have many. So all I got were a bunch of black blurs. Soon enough, though, Domino saw the camera and came out. So I followed her over to the water dish, and eventually took a picture there. Even with plenty of help from Mr. Photoshop, however, it wasn’t very good either. So I waited. Eventually, Domino went back into the closet and curled up, and this time I took some pictures with the flash.

Which picture to use? I hate flash pictures. I especially hate them when they basically lie—making a dark closet look brightly lit, for example. But the other picture was pretty lousy. Decisions, decisions. In the end, I opt for lousy but honest. Let’s call it “Still Life With Two Cats” just to make it seem a little more refined. Like Domino.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 1 August 2014

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There’s a Satirical, Naughty Musical About the Clinton White House Opening in New York. Listen to One of the Songs.

by JaimeLevering Posted on July 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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If the musical-theater community could find it in itself to create a cantata telling the story of a Twitter war between Paul Krugman and the president of Estonia, then surely a musical about the Clinton administration couldn’t have been that far behind.

On July 18, Clinton: The Musical will premiere at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival. (The festival has previously hosted such successful productions as Next to Normal and Altar Boyz, prior to their respective Broadway runs.) The book for Clinton was written by Australian writing duo and brothers Paul and Michael Hodge, and music and lyrics were penned by Paul Hodge. An earlier, shorter version was nominated for best new musical at the 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and a subsequent incarnation was mounted at London’s King’s Head Theatre the following year.

The idea for the musical emerged out of a Hodge family outing. “My family and I went to go and see a musical in Australia about an Australian politician, back in 2006 or 2007,” Paul Hodge tells Mother Jones. “And after the show, my dad said, ‘Oh, it was good, but politicians don’t make good subjects for musicals. The only politician who would make a good subject for that would be Bill Clinton.’ And I said, ‘Of course!'”

Clinton, a two-act musical satire, covers the eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. According to Paul, the music ranges from more traditional American musical styles to burlesque to 1990s pop. As for comedic influences, Paul cites Arrested Development, The Simpsons, and 30 Rock.

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There’s a Satirical, Naughty Musical About the Clinton White House Opening in New York. Listen to One of the Songs.

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Is Climate Change Destabilizing Iraq?

by JulioSteiner Posted on June 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared on Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

This winter was not a good one for farmers in the Fertile Crescent.

A punishing drought hit most of Syria and northern Iraq during what’s normally the wettest time of the year. In the mountains of eastern Turkey, which form the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, snow and rain were less than half of normal. The region has seen one of the worst droughts in decades.

Drought is becoming a fixture in the parched landscape, due to a drying trend of the Mediterranean and Middle East region fueled by global warming. The last major drought in this region (2006-2010) finished only a few years ago. When taken in combination with other complex drivers, increasing temperatures and drying of agricultural land is widely seen as assisting in the destabilization of Syria under the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Before civil war broke out there, farmers abandoned their desiccated fields and flooded the cities with protests. A series of UN reports released earlier this year found that global warming is already destabilizing nation states around the world, and Syria has been no exception.

With the ongoing crisis in Iraq seemingly devolving by the day, it’s not a stretch to think something similar could already be underway just next door.

One of the most devastating droughts in decades hit Syria and Iraq in 2007-2008. Scientists have linked the drought to climate change. NASA

Could there be a connection between climate change and the emerging conflict in Iraq?

The short answer is a qualified yes, according to Frank Femia of the Center for Climate and Security, a Washington-based policy institute advised by senior retired military and national security leaders. He explained in a phone interview:

It’s far too early, considering this is happening in real time, to figure out what is motivating ISIS and its members. Certainly, the natural resource stresses in the region make things worse. Terrorist organizations can try to control those resources and gain significant influence and power. You can’t say climate change is causing ISIS to do what it’s doing, but it climate change certainly has a role to play in the region.

Increasing temperatures may also be playing a role in the recent uptick in violence. A study published last year in the journal Science showed a strong connection between high temperatures and political instability, like civil wars, riots, and ethnic violence, though the cause is not well known. A previous study has linked dehydration with decreased cognitive performance and increased levels of anxiety.

Sure enough, this year has been unusually hot so far in Iraq with the March-April-May season ranking as the warmest on record across much of the country. (Reliable records from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration date back to 1880.) The emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria around the same time may just be an interesting coincidence, but the implications are important enough for us to consider a broader connection.

It’s getting hot in Iraq. National Climatic Data Center

The United Nations lists Iraq as “one of the Arab region’s most vulnerable countries to climate change.” In 2004, just after the American-led regime change, a Congressional Research Service report cited “rapid population growth coupled with limited arable land” and “a general stagnation of agricultural productivity” after decades of conflict and mismanagement during the final Saddam years as the main reasons Iraq grew more reliant on imports of food amid international sanctions and the oil-for-food program. A major drought from 1999-2001 also hampered the country’s ability to feed itself. Since then, conflict has raged and the climate has grown even more extreme, with alternating severe droughts and heavy rainstorms. From the United Nations Development Programme in 2009:

Iraq’s wheat production this year was down 45 percent from a normal harvest, with similar reductions expected in the coming year. As a result, the country has experienced a massive loss of seed reserves for future planting, forcing the country to significantly increase food imports at great cost to the economy.
Meanwhile, farmers are abandoning their fields en masse and moving to urban centres, a trend that has placed more stress on cities in Iraq that are already struggling to provide basic social services and economic opportunities to growing urban populations. As a result, social tensions and the risk of crime have increased.

Sound familiar? As in neighboring Syria, it’s increasingly clear that Iraq is drying out, an effect that’s long been predicted as a result of the human-caused build up of heat-trapping gases like CO2. Since 1973, Femia says, parts of Iraq and Syria have seen “some of the most dramatic precipitation declines in the world.” Citing projected stark declines in rainfall and continued population pressure and upstream dam building, a study released earlier this year made the case that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers may no longer reach the sea by 2040.

Much of Iraq’s climate is similar to California’s Central Valley, with a long summer dry season and a rainier, more productive winter. That’s helped Iraq serve as the breadbasket of the region for millennia, but no longer. Like Bakersfield, Baghdad is intensely dependent on river water from upstream for irrigation of most of its crops. After decades of war, not nearly as much water is getting through.

This year’s major drought has coincided with the rise of ISIS, which has already used dams as a weapon of war, threatening downstream agriculture and electricity production during its march to gain control of vast swaths of territory in Syria and northern Iraq. From Al Arabiya:

In Iraq, ISIS, reportedly in control of the strategic Mosul dam, has declared its intention to deprive Shiite regions from water. Further electricity shortages hit Southern Iraq, where the consecutive governments have failed in restoring basic services since 2003.

The declines in rainfall already seen in Syria and Iraq are on the order of scientists’ predictions but have generally come faster than climate models anticipated. According to retired US Navy Rear Adm. David Titley, the combination of worsening drought and violent conflict now spreading across the region “is a classic case of unintended and unforeseen consequences.”

Global warming might be affecting the rational processes at people working at Slate. You might want to open a few windows. You all are clearly breathing your own fumes. More…

For all the debate over climate change, those in the national security realm are moving surprisingly full-speed ahead. In this year’s Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon listed the impacts of climate change, like drought, as “threat multipliers.” As Femia put it, “the US military doesn’t have the luxury of planning for the short term.” Now that the Department of Defense has listed climate change as a national security threat, Femia says, “they have an obligation and duty to address those issues.”

For Femia, the way forward in Iraq and other parts of the region is by working at reducing one of the root drivers of Middle East conflict: water scarcity.

In post conflict situations, issues of disarmament and new political foundations and the relationship between various ethnic groups, those are all critical and need to be part of any solution. But if conflict resolution doesn’t involve natural resource management, you’re setting the stage for future instability.

The government of Iraq has named 2014 as a national Year of Environment in an attempt to prioritize the rehabilitation of the country’s degraded lands after years of conflict. Let’s hope they’re not too late.

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Is Climate Change Destabilizing Iraq?

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Now Elon Musk wants to revolutionize solar panel production

by ClaudioFitzGibb Posted on June 18, 2014

another bright idea

Now Elon Musk wants to revolutionize solar panel production

By

Steve & Michelle Gerdes

Thanks in part to Elon Musk, the world’s biggest and most advanced solar panel factory could be built in the U.S. in the coming years.

The Silicon Valley entrepreneur, fresh off announcing an effort to spur growth in the electric auto industry by opening up access to hundreds of Tesla Motors patents, on Tuesday pushed the cleantech envelope even further, announcing a bid to massively expand the solar panel industry.

Musk, chair of the solar panel installation giant SolarCity, told reporters that in the coming years the company plans to build a solar panel factory in the U.S. that’s “an order of magnitude bigger than any of the plants that exist” anywhere in the world today.

SolarCity is responsible for about a quarter of America’s residential solar panel installations every month — three times as much as its closest competitor. Its market dominance has been earned in part through its “zero-down” financing model. But that’s not enough. Musk says he worries that the company’s ongoing growth will be so rapid that it will start to encounter solar panel shortages, despite what now is an international glut of mostly Chinese-made panels.

So SolarCity is jumping into the development and manufacture of advanced solar panels through the acquisition for $200 million or more of Silicon Valley-based solar panel company Silevo, which has developed highly efficient rooftop photovoltaic cells. Using more efficient cells means fewer panels are needed for each rooftop, helping to push down the price of residential solar systems.

SolarCity

“If we don’t do this, we felt that there was risk of not being able to have the solar panels that we need to expand the business in the long term,” Musk said Tuesday during a call with reporters. “The rate at which solar panel technology is advancing — at least for the panels that are being made at large scale — it’s really not fast enough. We’re seeing high-volume production of relatively basic panels, but not high-volume production of advanced panels, so we think it’s important that the two be combined.”

In a blog post published Tuesday, SolarCity described its manufacturing ambitions:

We are in discussions with the state of New York to build the initial manufacturing plant, continuing a relationship developed by the Silevo team. At a targeted capacity greater than 1 GW within the next two years, it will be one of the single largest solar panel production plants in the world. This will be followed in subsequent years by one or more significantly larger plants at an order of magnitude greater annual production capacity.

Ultimately, Musk says, he wants to develop such advanced panels and manufacture them at such high volumes that fossil fuels simply cannot compete. “To be able to have solar power compete on an unsubsidized basis with fossil fuel energy coming from the grid, it’s critical that you have high efficiency solar panels,” he said.


Source
Solar at Scale, SolarCity blog

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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