By Sean Pool and John Dos Passos Coggin | Climate Progress
Full report available here:
Low-Cost Incentives Can Spur Innovation in the Solar Market
Concentrating solar power — also known as concentrated solar power, concentrated solar thermal, and CSP — is a cost-effective way to produce electricity while reducing our dependence on foreign oil, improving domestic energy-price stability, reducing carbon emissions, cleaning our air, promoting economic growth, and creating jobs. One energy expert has even touted it as the “technology that will save humanity.”
The U.S. Department of Energy has created the SunShot Initiative to lead research into the technology — work that aims to increase efficiency, lower costs, and deliver more reliable performance from concentrating solar power. Additionally, high-profile U.S.-based companies such as IBM have invested in CSP research. Increasingly, private and public stakeholders believe that the technology holds the greatest potential to harness the power of the sun to meet national sustainability goals.