Solyndra: Not indicative of solar's bright future

Solyndra: Not indicative of solar’s bright future

It’s easy to look at Solyndra and think, That’s it for solar… But the reality is, it’s only just the beginning.

What happened with Solyndra is exactly what we discussed in a previous post. China is investing in and manufacturing solar power at such an incredibly fast rate that no other country can keep up.

Just last year, the China Development Bank invested $30 billion to finance Chinese solar manufacturers. That’s 20 times the amount that the United States loaned to solar manufacturers.

The result? China has driven down the cost of solar — which has plummeted 42 percent in just the past nine months — resulting in the bankruptcy of solar manufacturers just about everywhere else in the world.

In the last month, we have witnessed a perfect storm. And I’m not talking about Hurricane Irene. I’m talking about the perfect mix of plummeting solar costs, limited U.S. government investments and a European banking crisis that, their powers combined, were enough to cause one of the world’s most innovative and fastest growing companies to tank faster than anyone could have predicted.

But we have learned from Solyndra. We have learned that government support clearly matters, and that China is about to become the world’s single manufacturer of solar power because of its solar investments.

More importantly, we have learned that solar is not dead. The Solar Foundation recently published a press release about the 2011 National Solar Jobs Census Report, the results of which showed that the solar industry grew by 6.8 percent between August 2010 and August 2011. That’s compared to a 0.7 percent growth rate for the national economy and a 2 percent drop in the fossil fuel electric generation industry.

These solar jobs may no longer be in the manufacturing sector, but the U.S. can still boast having the two largest solar panel production and distribution companies in the world.

Let’s not let Solyndra’s perfect storm rain on solar’s bright future. Let’s instead focus on solar’s countless success stories as we decide the future of this country’s clean energy economy.

USA Today