Alternative Energies Are Looking Good Again

In 1990, the United States imported 46 percent of its oil; a decade later, it imported 57 percent. After the oil embargo of 1978, the Department of Energy invested $250 million in photovoltaic, or solar-energy, technology, hoping to wean America off Middle East dependence, but by 1983, that figure dropped to $35 million. Now, faced with increasing instability in the Middle East, terrorist strategies to disrupt oil flows, dwindling world supplies, and harmful impacts on the environment, as well as technological improvement and declining costs, venture capitalists are increasingly turning to alternative energy sources as the investments of the future. "We have a huge energy issue in this century, and it will not be solved by policy," said Stanford University School of Engineering Dean Jim Plummer. "The only real solution is technology." Heading the pack for alternative energy sources are thin-film solar cells, which can be sprayed onto sheets of plastic or roof tiles in precise shapes. Even governments around the globe are taking interest in such technology. Japan, Germany, and California, the three largest solar markets in the world to date, subsidize about half the costs of solar installations, a policy being emulated by New York, Illinois, and New Jersey. Households that use solar technology can sell their excess energy to utilities for higher-than-market prices. (go to web site)