SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 18 (UPI) -- The conventional wisdom is that solar energy needs tax breaks to be as cheap as fossil fuel electricity, but many industry experts are saying that simply isn't true.
"I'm not asking for subsidies, I'm saying we'll compete," Vinod Khosla, a major solar investor widely considered to be one of the most successful venture capitalists in the world, told the Solar Power 2006 conference in San Jose, Calif. on Tuesday.
"The solar industry is poised for breakaway growth, not because it's cleaner (in terms of carbon emissions), but because it's cheaper," Khosla said.
The president of the Solar Energy Industries Association feels the same way: "Solar will be the lowest-cost option at the retail level in 10 years," Rhone Resch told United Press International on Monday evening.
Resch said that while other forms of energy, such as nuclear, might be cheaper to produce, the cost of bringing them to the consumer will make them more expensive options than solar, provided that the current 10-year solar incentive plans run their course and that a similar, federal plan is enacted.
"Solar energy will cost 8 cents to 9 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with 11 cents to 13 cents per kilowatt hour (for conventional electricity)," Resch said.
"Explosive growth" in the industry could come as early as 2011, Khosla said.
Furthermore, Resch said he can't see any per-barrel price low enough to endanger the solar industry's growth, because electricity in the U.S. comes from coal or natural gas, but not oil.
However, "the perception is that when oil prices increase, renewable energy becomes a more viable alternative," Resch said. "There is a very clear direction of (fossil-driven) energy prices not going down."
Some conventional fossil fuel companies are turning up the heat on legislators not to embrace solar, though. When asked if the solar energy industry was under lobbying pressure from these companies, Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., said, "You bet you're under pressure, and you better fight back."
While Cardoza said he admired BP's efforts to diversify into the solar arena, of other companies he said, "There are reasons why (the Kyoto Protocols to reduce carbon emissions) didn't pass, and some of those were profitability reasons."
Khosla suggested that when solar energy options cost less than coal-fired power plants, the federal government should stop subsidizing solar and start subsidizing the coal industry -- to stop producing, as certain farm subsidies have done for farmers since the Great Depression.
The venture capitalist, who was the founding chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems, said coal was one of the biggest contributors to global warming, and maintained that getting rid of coal-fired power plants was the best way to make a dent in the world's carbon emissions problem.
But because the price of natural gas is up, "coal is back," Khosla said. He cited plans for dozens of new coal power plants in the Western United States as evidence.
Countries such as Germany and Japan have enacted "carbon constraints" -- financial penalties for producing carbon emissions -- and that led to rapid solar industry growth in those countries, John Stanton, the president of the National Environmental Trust, said at the conference.
"For the first time, they were putting a value on low-carbon or no-carbon energy," instead of just a feel-good benefit for doing something environmental, Stanton said.
The United States needs a similar measure to "kill coal," Khosla said.
Of course, there is a lot of work to be done before solar companies can reach the goals set out by the experts. "It's not an energy crisis, it's a technology crisis or a conversion crisis," Khosla said.
He outlined several things the industry must work on in the coming years, and first among them was increasing the efficiency of solar cells.
"Reducing cost may not be the right thing to do," Khosla said. He pointed to multi-junction thin film photovoltaic cells as an important way to increase efficiency.
Increasing the scale of solar manufacturing and developing batteries and other ways to store solar power are also crucial to solar's success, Khosla continued.
Khosla also lauded concentrating solar thermal power -- which uses sunlight to heat a liquid, in turn making steam to power a turbine -- as "the key to turning off coal."
He cited Israeli solar company Luz II's "power tower" model as an especially promising development, though he told UPI that "I can't tell you (yet) about the sexiest stuff I've seen."
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