Oil @ Sun

oil @ sun

Everything has its price. The oil price has come down from >$150 per barrel to now round about $46; that is 70% off a price level caused by the casino hype fuelled from speculation multiplied by an abundance of monetary liquidity divided by greed.The price for photovoltaic modules goes from >$4 per Watt, it will soon hit <$2/W of electric energy generated; this equals a 50% rise in profitability.

Unlike the artificial price finding for oil the price for PV modules is dependant substantially on subsidies paid for decentralised electricity generation but there are some major reasons why the prices will fall further and subsidising can make sense:

* PV industry worldwide is now an established industry, long passed the stage of test and trial; it has created jobs and developed new technologies; it will press its capacity surplus into the markets as there is still a margin left above cost of production;

* vigilantly the subsidies will be reduced step by step;

* an investment into PV contrary to one into oil is one that allows future running costs to be neglected and regarded as zero or close there to.

* PV products are future-proof in so far as they (directly) do not cause but help solve emission and pollution problems;

* PV will allow for any building to go from passive to active, thus creating more energy than it consumes.

Projecting these arguments into the future adding highly efficient decentralised micro-generation equipment installed in ultra modern low energy buildings, all of this is available today, makes oldtime technologies such as nuclear power look very bad; the ones that declare those as our only choice are left unmasked.

This has its merits; and it allows thinking that the credit crunch came just in time.

Carpe diem!