Solar storm almost cost us $2 trillion

I think it's safe to say that free-market forces are our best defense against electrical grid-frying solar flares. There's no reason for Big Governments to plan ahead to mitigate CMEs.

Yep, the Sun is no match for the Invisible Hand!

How a solar storm two years ago nearly caused a catastrophe on Earth

By Jason Samenow

July 23, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/Uot6dz

Solar 'puts power in the hands of the little guy'

Solar power will soon have "grid parity" with coal and other dirty forms of power production. Germany is at the forefront. Meanwhile, solar panels on every house and in every backyard are making energy production local and distributive, instead of remote and concentrated:

By decentralizing power generation, the renewables boom could do to the power industry what the Internet did to the media: Put power in the hands of the little guy, and force power companies to rethink how they do business.

Can You Have Too Much Solar Energy?

By Andrew Curry

March 29, 2013 | Slate

URL: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/alternative_energy/2013/03/solar_power_in_germany_how_a_cloudy_country_became_the_world_leader_in_solar.single.html

Barack the Bashful is silent (again)

Again, inexplicably, Obama has failed to take credit for a great achievement: pre-approving 250,000 acres of federal lands for solar energy projects, while Romney's beating him up in the debates for not opening up Yellowstone Park and the Arctic Wildlife Reserve to fracking and strip mining.  

Under Obama, the Interior Department didn't go project-by-project, or site-by-site, it looked at all federal public lands, did a programmatic environmental impact assessment of all of them, narrowed down the choices, got public feedback at several intervals, and then pre-approved any big solar energy projects in six states.

Because the public was involved, there won't be any litigation or protests by environmental groups.  Approval time and risk will be reduced for solar entrepreneurs.  Everybody has had their say and is on board.  That's how public management should be done, not by politicians striking secret deals in backrooms with Big Business!

New Program Spurs Solar Development on Public Land

By Flora Lichtman

October 19, 2012 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/T35FhA

German solar power = 20 nuclear stations!

Yep, those Germans sure are smart.  But there's just no way we in the U.S. could spend a few $ billion subsidizing an infant industry (solar power) that could wean us off foreign oil and not impose negative externalities.  Nope, only those super-efficient Germans can manage that.

Germany sets new solar power record, institute says

By Erik Kirschbaum

May 26, 2012 | Reuters

URL:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-solar-idUSBRE84P0FI20120526

China subsidizing solar exports to U.S.

So China is smart and we're dumb, or rather, we naively stick to the rules of the "free market" while China plays by the rules of real business.

China's goal is to drive U.S. solar panel makers out of business and dominate U.S. market share by dumping panels that are about 10 percent cheaper on the U.S. Once their work is done, the Chinese government will stop providing $30 billion in subsidies to Chinese producers, and the price for panels will go up.

It's too bad that "industrial policy" is a dirty word in the U.S. that smacks of socialism, because China is eating our lunch while we're acting like choir-boy neo-liberal business professors.

And yeah, it's great that American workers are installing those solar panels, no matter where they're made, but does anybody believe that America's economic future will be secure if we don't MAKE stuff anymore, only provide each other with services?

Cheap Chinese Panels Spark Solar Power Trade War

By Christopher Joyce

January 19, 2012 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/x1lG9b