Big box retailers have acres of unused roofs. As Kim Saylors-Laster, Walmart’s Vice President for Energy, put it, “We have a lot of roof space, and it’s a really underutilized asset.” As the price of new panels drops (nearly 14 percent, year over year), “we can locate solar on those rooftops without buying any additional ground.” There are even more benefits on the margin. As Rhone Resch, head of the SEIA said, “When you step back as a building manager and look at a roof, it’s a liability for most buildings. You’ve got to repair it, replace it every ten years.” Panels change them into an asset. “You generate electricity but you also protect the roof by blocking the ultraviolet rays. You get a longer lifespan.”
The panels on Walmart’s roofs are owned and operated by third party solar companies – like Sun Edison, Sun Power, and Solar City – from which the company buys energy through power-purchase-agreements. Some sell the system for free, and give customers better rates than the grid.
A full 79 percent of American IKEA stores have solar roofs; the annual power generated is the equivalent of reducing 71,000 tons of atmospheric CO2, or removing 14,000 cars from the road, or powering 90,000 homes. (Stunningly, all that goes to powering only 39 IKEA locations – which shows how “big” a big box store is.)
India and China are ramping up oil usage even as the world presently consumes 3 times as much oil as it’s discovering. The major decade of discovery was the 1970s. Why else drill in miles deep locations now? In a 21 PowerPoint printout:‘www.businessinsider.com/the-impending-world-energy-mess-2010-11offers a complete education on Peak Oil, a premise accepted by both the German and American militaries. China's food and water problems because of climate change are already limiting it's development and may have massive implications for its future stability.But then Austin chemist Xiaoyang Zhu and his team have demonstrated that exploiting the dark shadow state to produce double the electrons could increase solar cell efficiency to 44 percent percen http://www.earthtechling.com/2011/12/better-solar-may-lurk-in-shadow-state/3D solar cells seek out thermal as well as light for electricity http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/28/mits-3d-solar-cells-take-cubism-to-new-energy-efficient-heights/Self-Cleaning Solar Cell Nanocoating decreases maintenance and increases efficiency http://www.pv-magazine.com/services/press-releases/details/beitrag/self-cleaning-hydrophobic-nano-coating-for-solar-panel-glass-generating-great-results-for-nanoshell_100005577/#axzz24alu434LThe price of panels took a 30% drop in the last year... “NRG expects the cost to fall in half again in the next two years, which would make solar power less expensive than retail electricity in roughly 20 states.” ...http://solar.coolerplanet.com/News/2011123001-solar-best-and-worst-of-2011.aspx Solar power will be a mayor employer by the end of Obama's next term.
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