This report from the Reuters news service on the global solar energy boom contains some very interesting information for anyone considering investing in that industry.
Rapidly developing countries like China are joining a silicon solar cell manufacturing boom, helping to pare the price of the alternative technology and simple, economy panels could soon be affordable even to the rural poor, said Professor Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate physicist based at the University of California, Berkeley. “Very inexpensive solar cells could be used by off-grid people to charge appliances that don’t use a lot of power but make a world of difference,” he said, listing life-enhancing items such as radios, mobile phones, water purifiers and bright, efficient lamps called light emitting diodes (LEDs).
The World Bank last month announced a private sector competition to devise the best-value, low carbon light source for poor households in Africa, as a way to flag up what it estimates is a $17 billion African market in off-grid lighting.
A $17 billion market for low-carbon lights for off-grid Africans. That’s a huge potential market.
