Photovoltaic news and pv jobs

Money talks

06. September 2010 By:  Brandon Mitchener

Importance of finance grows as subsidies fall - and what the media misses about the 'high cost of solar'.

Guido Agostinelli, senior technology associate at Good Energies, told the EPIA PV summit today that financing was becoming a more important constraint to PV companies. “There has been a remarkable collapse of money going into new companies in solar since 2009,” he told an audience of industry insiders.

While government money continues to flow into PV and other renewable energies, the flow of private money has shrunk. That means players that can leverage financial strength stand to gain, especially as feed-in tariff cuts reduce margins for marginal players.

Agostinelli also took issue with the view, popular among some German politicians these days, that solar is “too expensive” compared with other energy sources. As everyone in the renewable energy business knows, and wishes that those in the mainstream media would “get”, this is only because no one talks about the billions and billions of subsidies that have gone into and continue to go into conventional energy sources, including nuclear and fossil fuels.

Citing recent studies by the International Energy Agency and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Agostinelli said that the total global cost of PV subsidies between today and the end of subsidies (because solar will soon be competitive with other energy sources) will just match what fossil fuel power producers in developing countries got in 2008 alone! Yes, you read right. He says global feed-in tariffs cost just a fraction of what goes to fossil fuels. Maybe someone should forward those studies to some in the German mainstream news media??