Clean-Tech is the next great Global Industry

The Solar industry has been consolidating for the last year. 

The following quotes from an interview with Applied Materials CEO Mike Splinter make strong arguments for a prosperous future in the renewable energy business :

"In 2008, more silicon was consumed globally making solar panels than microchips, said Splinter.

“We are seeing the industrialization of the solar business,” he added. “In the last 12 months, it has brought us $1.3 billion in revenues. It is hard to build a billion-dollar business.”

Applied sells its solar-panel factories for $200 million each. Solar panels can be made from many different semiconductors, including thin film coated onto glass with nanotechnology and from crystalline silicon.

If we want to launch a solar industry here, big-time, we need to offer the kind of long-term certainty that Germany does or impose the national requirement on our utilities to generate solar power as China does or have the government build giant solar farms, the way it built the Hoover Dam, and sell the electricity.

...the most important shift in the world in the last 18 months. China has decided that clean-tech is going to be the next great global industry and is now creating a massive domestic market for solar and wind, which will give it a great export platform.

In October, Applied will be opening the world’s largest solar research center — in Xian, China. Gotta go where the customers are. So, if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from China."