Juggling Dynamite

Starting my vegetable seeds this month, I am reminded yet again of how much we need sunlight to produce food. Fortunately, our ecosystem is one miraculous, giant solar panel.

“A recent Deutsche Bank report concludes that solar power has now reached grid parity, meaning that it costs the same as electricity from the power grid, in Italy and India (where the government’s goal is 20GW of solar by 2022), and that by next year even more countries will reach parity.

The German bank has also increased its solar demand forecast for this year by 20% because of strong demand in places like India, the U.S., China (around 7 to 10 GW), the U.K. (around 1 to 2 GW), Germany and Italy (around 2 GW).

We’ve already written about how China is expected to become the world’s biggest solar market this year (it already is the biggest producer). There’s also progress with big concentrating solar farms, even though the big drop in solar PV prices has made them relatively less attractive than they used to be: The current biggest CSP plant has started operations in the UAE, and an even bigger solar CSP farm is under construction in the Mojave desert in the US.” See: Solar has reached grid parity

Steps in the right direction… see also: after 10 years of hard work, Ontario getting ready to close its last coal power plants as the province transitions to greater natural gas use. Next step is to replace fossil fuel generation with clean power sources, but getting rid of coal is an important part of the journey.

“Many people have been talking about job creation lately, especially politicians. But is government the best creator of jobs? And is job creation the best thing for the economy? Professor Steve Horwitz explains that there is a difference between creating jobs and creating wealth. Creating jobs is relatively easy, but the most economic progress is made when jobs are eliminated because they become unnecessary. This does lead to some unemployment, but the alternatives are worse. To prevent transitional unemployment would also halt innovation, growth, and the reduction of poverty. So what is the best way to create valuable, meaningful jobs? Professor Horwitz says, “The best job-creation program in human history is the free market and the entrepreneurship it generates.”

Here is a direct link.

Bill Dunkelberg, National Federation of Independent Business chief economist, reports results of the NFIB survey on small business, which shows the optimism index dropped 1.3 points in March to 89.5. Here is a direct link.

77% of small business owners say they think the economy will be the same or worse within 6 months and none reported plans to hire new people. Small business sentiment continues to be in recession.

Chart source: zerohedge.com