One of the truisms of business journalism is that any deal that leads with the “b-word” is automatically news. As in $1 billion, a.k.a 1,000 millions of dollars. Once you begin factoring in China, though, that rule might need re-thinking. After all, 1.3 billion of people often ensures billions in demand.
Yet it’s news — big news — when a U.S. engineering firm, Fluor, lands a single $1 billion contract to build a production plant for LDK Solar, which makes the solar wafers that go into solar panels. LDK, which recently IPO’d on Wall Street, says with this plant its output will hit 15,000 metric tons of polysilicon by 2009, more than double its 2008 goal. Other key solar suppliers in China followed by the markets include Suntech Power Holdings and Yingli Green Energy Holding.
What’s amazing, if you think about for a second, is here you have the convergence of two absolutely key trends: A huge, fast-growing emerging economy that needs power to continue to grow and, thanks to China’s export juggernaut (toy recalls notwithstanding), enough cash to really throw at making solar and other pollution-free, high-return energy investments. The so-called “developed” world may find itself on the receiving end of amazing new technology transfers in only a few years.
