Earnings season is over for solar manufacturers, and that means it's back to work making deals and expanding their reach. Here are a few of the notable developments in the industry this week.
Deals of the week
First Solar
India is expected to join China and the U.S. as countries the solar industry hopes will drive demand in coming years.
Yingli Green Energy
MEMC Electronic Materials
The Chinese solar powerhouse
It looks like the U.S. and China will both be passing 1 GW of solar installed annually in 2011. But China is making a more calculated investment in solar, and Greentech Media expects installations to be 4 GW by 2015.
Suntech Power
What you didn't hear from Obama last night
In last night's jobs speech, President Obama mentioned the words "green," "solar," and "renewable" a combined zero times. Earlier this week, fellow Fool David Lee Smith and I went back and forth on whether "green" jobs should be a focus in the speech, and I definitely ended up getting the short end of the stick. Here's to hoping the cardiac paddles weren't as necessary as Mr. Smith insinuated when the president glossed over everything green.
But this is a major blow for solar manufacturers. As I pointed out last week, solar is one of the few bright spots in the economy, and I can't help but feel we've missed an opportunity to make it brighter. With the federal government unable to come up with a coherent solar power plan, manufacturers are going to have to rely on individual states to set the rules.
China, India, Japan, and Germany all have some sort of plan for solar power expansion. What is ours?
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