Junko Movellan

By 2016, the federal 30% Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and the California Solar Initiative (CSI), the nation’s largest ratepayer funded program, will have expired. A key question lingering until then will be: “Can the US PV industry be weaned off government subsidies and therefore become self-sustaining?”

In 1854, Matthew C. Perry - the Commander of the US Navy - compelled Japan to openup to its economy to foreign trade, after more than 200 years of a self-imposed isolation policy enforced by the ruling Tokugawa Shogun. The Commander arrived in Japan with four black-coloured US Navy warships, billowing black smoke. Later the term ‘Black Ships’ would be coined in Japan to symbolize any threat imposed by Western technology.