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Continued from previous page
A Solar Future
While Musk is launching new solar businesses, Bill
Rever, WG'82, is working with one of the stalwarts
in the industry as strategic marketing manager
for BP Solar.
Rever first became interested in solar energy as a graduate
student at Penn State, where he earned a dual degree—a master's
degree in engineering along with his Wharton MBA. It
was an engineering course in solar energy, combined with the
stimulating business classes, that led to his life's calling.
Upon graduation, Rever said he "knocked on doors" of
the top solar energy businesses, and was offered a position
with a small but up-and-coming solar energy firm, Solarex.
During the next 20 years, Rever came along as Solarex was
purchased by Amoco, and again when Amoco was acquired
by BP, one of the world's leading energy companies.
BP Solar designs, builds, and installs solar electric systems
for residential and industrial customers. The company has installed
systems in more than 160 countries and has manufacturing
centers in Australia, India, Spain, and the U.S.
The solar industry, these days, is almost entirely focused on
solar photovoltaics, although there is still a small market for
solar thermal products in India and other places. In the 1970s
and early 1980s, the solar energy market in the United States
was driven a lot by government demonstration projects funded
by the Department of Energy. Photovoltaics were entering
markets where it was economically justified, typically remote
areas without conventional and inexpensive utilities. The market
here flattened in the late 1980s, but started growing again
in the early 1990s. Climate change and global warming, as
well as reduction in access to petroleum, have brought new
attention—and funding—to solar, said Rever.
Rever's work has always been demanding, and these days
travel is a constant, he said. In the 1980s, most of BP Solar's
markets were in less developed countries. Now the markets
are mainly in the avant-garde of new energy and environmentally
driven markets like Germany and Japan.
In the last year, with a leading role in the development
of a global marketing strategy for BP Solar, Rever has visited
Japan, Australia, China, Germany, and Thailand, working
with officials to develop new markets. He said he hopes
sometime to shift that focus domestically. The United States
accounts for just 7 percent of the global market for photovoltaics,
even though it consumes 25 to 30 percent of the
world's energy.
Rever said solar power is such a fringe player in the
United States that many people assume that because he's at
BP, he's in the petroleum business.
"If you're a stock market analyst, you're looking at BP as
an oil and gas firm," said Rever. "But we've been in the solar
industry for 30 years."
Greener Buildings, Greener Earth
Home solar systems are still too costly for widespread
adoption, but Rever looks forward to that changing.
There's been a long history of cost reductions,
he said, on average about 5 percent per year. Rever said the key
factor keeping solar from becoming a financially viable alternative
for homeowners are the historically low prices for other
forms of energy. As electricity and gas prices rise, however, he
said solar is becoming a more reasonable alternative, both economically
and environmentally.
While Rever is working to capture and convert sunshine
into power, Bob Aresty, W'63, is hoping to reflect and absorb
those same rays.
Aresty is president and CEO of The Solar Energy
Corporation (Solec), the world's largest manufacturer of specialized,
heat reflecting and absorbing coatings for solar,
building, roofing, and manufacturing. The technology behind
these coatings was developed in 1974 in a laboratory on
a farm in Princeton, NJ, and today Aresty produces two types
of coatings that insulate and control heat and light absortion
and radiation. The factory itself, heated 100 percent by solar,
has a glass front to make best use of passive solar heat.
The technology may look like just another layer of paint,
but the chemistry of that coating can produce energy savings
immediately. It sounds entirely too simple ? you paint on
the products and your bills go down. Solec's coatings can lessen
air conditioning costs by 10 percent to 15 percent.
These days, as global warming make it more crucial than
ever to reduce dependence on electricity, Aresty said the potential
of his products is "really quite mindboggling."
"I think of what we do in our little niche, we could do between
$50 and $100 million a year, and we don't do anything
like that," he said.
That could change. Aresty's products are part of the green
buildings movement, the larger trend to develop high-performance
buildings that meet five areas of human and environmental
health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy
efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.
The movement was marginal when Aresty began, but
it is now mainstream. The U.S. Green Building Council
(USGBC), has a membership of more than 6,900 organizations.
McGraw-Hill Construction estimates that more than
$59 billion will be spent annually on green building by 2010,
up from $10.2 billion in 2004.
The imperative for greener building technology is worldwide.
In November 2006, the Wharton Infosys Business
Transformation Awards honored environmental entrepreneur
Enrique Gomez Junco B. for leading Mexico toward
greener construction. When Celsol, the company he founded
to provide solar energy to hotels in Mexico, faltered due
to lack of financing, Gomez Junco re-launched his business
in 2000. Under the name Optima Energia the company has
been building energy and water efficient buildings through
performance contracting, saving its clients, 84 million kilowatts
of electricity, 11.9 million liters of natural gas, 2 million
cubic meters of water, 14 million liters of diesel, for a total of
$1,000,000 (USD) a month.
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