| White House Announces Solar
America Initiative
Building on President Bush's State of the Union address Tuesday night,
the White House has proposed the largest funding increase for solar
energy research in U.S. budget history. The Solar America Initiative will add $65 million to the solar program at the Department of Energy--a 78 percent budget increase--to foster research and development for rapid commercialization of new technology. The Solar Energy Industries Association hailed this initiative as a key victory for the next great high-tech growth industry in the US: solar energy. "The Germans and Japanese have been outspending the U.S. on solar research for the last decade by orders of magnitude," said Rhone Resch, president, SEIA. "This program reverses that trend. It will improve our competitiveness in a global solar market that is growing at 40 percent per year and will help bring high quality jobs back to the U.S. We applaud the President for his vision of an economy based on clean, reliable solar power." The funding boost will accelerate the progress of several different public-private sector solar research partnerships, including the Thin Film Partnership and the Crystalline Silicon Initiative. These initiatives seek to reduce costs, increase system efficiency and improve the manufacturing of solar power. More details on the funding increase will be available on February 6, when the DOE unveils its budget request. The solar industry will urge Congress to fully appropriate the requested solar budget increase, and to expand the research budget for vital solar technologies such as solar water heating and concentrating solar power, according to SEIA. "For years, natural gas was considered the transition fuel from fossil energy to renewables," said Resch. "This initiative signals that the transition has begun toward solar. Combined with the Federal tax credits that started on January 1st, this initiative solidifies solar as an important part of our energy portfolio."
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