Pickens: World’s Biggest Wind Farm No Longer on Drawing Board – Greentech Media

The oil tycoon has scrapped his plans for a 4-gigawatt wind farm in Texas, planning instead to build five or six much smaller wind farms using the General Electric wind turbines he’s already ordered.

Los Angeles announces end to coal power – BusinessGreen.com

The City of Los Angeles last week committed to completely eliminate the use of electricity generated using coal by 2020, replacing the 40 per cent of the city’s coal power with energy from renewable sources.

Clean tech investments “moderate” rebound – SFGate

Topline: “Moderate” rebound from “significant” declines. “It looks like we have bounced off the bottom,” said Brian Fan, the Cleantech Group’s senior director of research. “One quarter isn’t a trend, but it looks like the worst is behind us.”

The Shining: Solar Power, Grid Parity, and the Cost of Power – WSJ Blogs

That is, the whole idea of “grid parity” is elusive. That means that solar power’s goal posts–becoming cost competitive with a regular power plant–are different in every field. Some places jack up regular power prices, making solar’s arrival a little easier. Other places jack up solar subsidies, which amounts to the same. Some places do both; some do neither. There’s no such thing as subsidy-free, cost-competitive solar power.

Keeping PV fabs safe: the right thing to do — and economical – Solid State Technology

To understand why, we need to first note that, when compared to the semiconductor industry, solar panel makers use large quantities of hydrogen, silane, and other explosive and/or toxic gases. Substrates for solar cells are generally orders of magnitude larger than silicon wafers, and process chambers accordingly contain much larger volumes of process gases.