Renewable opportunity
Customer demand and government
initiatives fuel a growing interest in renewable energy
On the factory floor, Mark Fidler sees a bright future for Evergreen Solar.
A focus on climate change and the economy have generated worldwide excitement about renewable energy. In response to growing demand, utilities are investing in new ways to generate electricity for the power grid, and governments are supporting their efforts. In the United States, the federal stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the American Clean Energy and Security Act together would generate an annual investment in alternative energy of $150 billion over 10 years—including $40 billion in renewables—and would create up to 1.7 million new jobs, according to a study by the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute. Globally, the World Bank increased its funding for renewable energy and energy-efficiency projects by 87 percent in fiscal year 2008, to nearly US$2.7 billion.
Renewable energy is typically defined as energy generated from natural resources that can be replenished. Some people include older technologies, particularly hydropower from dams and biomass from steam-producing industrial plants, when speaking of renewable energy. But for most people today, “renewable energy” means newer technologies for generating electricity from wind, solar, geothermal, wave and biomass resources.
President Obama has set a target that 10 percent of America’s electricity should come from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025. About half of US states also have their own mandates for renewables. The European Union has an aggressive goal as well—to derive 20 percent of electricity from renewables by 2020.
That makes it a good time to be working in a field like solar energy, says Mark Fidler, vice president of finance for Evergreen Solar, based in Marlboro, Massachusetts. Evergreen Solar makes solar panels that can be placed on a roof or in an open field to generate electricity. Consumers and businesses alike are using them to provide for their own needs and sometimes to sell surplus electricity back to the utilities.
Fidler, who joined Evergreen in 2001, began his career with PwC, where he was a senior associate. He then earned an MBA at Northeastern University and worked for two other companies, looking for an opportunity on the operational side of a business. Evergreen provided what he was looking for. Hired as corporate controller, Fidler set up the company’s accounting and finance processes before moving up to vice president. “I knew the potential was there for renewable energy,” Fidler says. “It was an exciting industry to get into, and I’m glad I did.”
Evergreen’s solar panels use the company’s unique String Ribbon technology, a process that creates wafers by pulling high-temperature carbon filaments through molten silicon to form a silicon ribbon. The process uses less silicon than conventional wafer technology and is therefore less expensive, Fidler explains. Silicon is the costliest element in solar panels.
Fidler takes a break while his company’s robots help assemble their photovoltaic panels.
Evergreen markets its panels to resellers who cater to residential and commercial customers. The company also licenses the technology to a company in Europe, Sovello, of which Evergreen owns one-third.
In fact, large-scale commercialization of the technology began with Sovello. To gain better access to capital through German government subsidies, Evergreen formed a joint venture in 2004 with the German company Q-Cells, the largest solar cell manufacturer in the world. In 2005, a Norwegian company, Renewable Energy Corporation, joined the venture to provide silicon.
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