California celebrated a major clean energy milestone yesterday as Governor Brown signed into law a bill that will significantly diversify the state’s energy portfolio.

The enacted legislation, which was authored by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, will increase the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) to 33% by 2020 (up from the pre-existing RPS of 20%). This new law is a giant leap forward and sends an encouraging message to the venture capital community that the state remains committed to developing a vibrant renewable energy and clean technology sector.

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Already the country’s leading producer of oil and gas and wind energy, Texas has an opportunity to take the lead in generating solar energy too. It’s the perfect triple play. Texas has more sun than any other state, ample land resources for large scale and distributed solar installations, and a tremendous need for domestic energy generation. Solar is an ideal solution and the market is growing exponentially in markets where a favorable regulatory scheme exists. So how can we jump start this industry in Texas?

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太阳能 – 新能源的王道

随着中国12-5计划的深入实施， 新能源的发展已经在整个能源产业的比重中占了不可忽视的地位。

太阳能， 作为一个非常重要的组成部分正在以一个非比寻常的速度在发展。

随着产业链的不断完善， 国际市场的需求加上国内新兴市场的刺激， 中国作为太阳能光伏产业的老大的地位正在发挥着举足轻重的作用。

China has overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy, however this is not necessarily a triumphant moment. Not only because China’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) still seriously lags behind the developed world, it is also trying to accelerate economic restructuring and reduce its heavy reliance on high energy consumption to fuel its economy.

Having maintained a strong presence in China for 26 years, we are confident that as the current energy intensive “GDP Cult” fades, China will accelerate development in solar and renewable energy for a more sustainable development— and Applied Materials will play a key role in helping drive that green GDP.

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The history of the semiconductor industry in India dates back to the 1980s, when multinational giants from the U.S. started outsourcing chip design and software development to India, so that the country’s technical talent pool could be tapped. Initially work in this area was centered on software development directly tied to hardware. It included development of automation tools, modeling and simulation, and embedded software, to name a few products. Over the years, the scope of these projects has expanded with several semiconductor companies in India adopting high-end product development. Since its origin in the country, the industry has been growing at a steady pace. The ISAFrost & Sullivan report estimated the Indian semiconductor market to be worth $4.56 bn in 2007. This figure rose to $5.9 bn by 2008 at a compound annual growth rate of 13.4%, and to $7.59 bn by 2010.

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As I mentioned on the National Journal’s Energy Blog, tax incentives are part of the solution but must be used with many more and different policies if we expect to build a competitive renewable energy industry in the U.S. that can compete with heavily subsidized programs in China, Japan and India. The U.S. needs policy incentives that both pull deployment and demand and push domestic manufacturing.

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