More Local Business

• Mineral leases concern residents in eastern New Mexico
• PNM: Power Saver plan would reduce electricity use in peak demand cycle
• Air-bag waiver brings Tesla car plant one step closer to Albuquerque

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation
• Albuquerque company participates in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

WASHINGTON — Advent Solar licensed the technology to make its unique photovoltaic power cell from Sandia National Laboratories and has a manufacturing plant with 165 employees in Albuquerque.

But 80 percent of its customers are in Europe and most of its suppliers are in Germany and Japan.

To spur demand in the United States and build up the domestic solar industry, an Advent executive Thursday asked Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat, and other members of the Senate Finance Committee to expand the tax incentives for homeowners and businesses to use solar power.

"The world is moving forward in this technology, and we have some room to make up," testified Chet Boortz, Advent's vice president of business development.

Advent Solar makes a 155 mm- square power cell with 25,000 laser-drilled holes. It recently announced its first installation in the United States at San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Boortz said Germany and Japan are the countries with the fastest-growing use of solar power, because they put in place the biggest incentives to use photovoltaic cells.

In the United States, a homeowner can claim a 30 percent tax credit on the cost of installing solar panels, but only up to a total credit of $2,000. There are also production and investment tax credits for manufacturers. Those incentives were part of the energy bill of 2005 sponsored by Bingaman and Sen. Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican.

Now Bingaman is considering how to expand and extend those incentives, both as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and as chairman of the energy subcommittee on the Finance Committee, which writes the tax bills. Bingaman also is considering legislation to require utilities to obtain a certain percentage of their power from renewable resources like wind and solar.

Bingaman told Boortz, "I don't disagree the first step is to increase demand."

But he added that, without some subsidies for investment and production in the United States, "we may wind up buying more and more (photovoltaic cells) from China," instead of adding jobs here.

One analyst of international market trends, Jonathan Johns of the Ernest & Young energy group in Great Britain, said the United States is the best country to invest in renewable energy, but only because of the production and investment incentives contained in the 2005 energy bill.