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Suntech and REC Make $180M Agreement

Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd. (NYSE: STP) has entered into a $180 million agreement with Renewable Energy Corporation ASA (REC) to purchase silicon wafers over a 5-year period. Sumitomo Corporation is acting as REC’s commercial representative for the deal. “This agreement with REC and Sumitomo, together with our other long-term supply agreements, will enable Suntech to further reduce spot market purchases of raw materials and improve our cost competitiveness in the future,” said Dr. Zhengrong Shi, Suntech’s chairman and CEO. “This agreement also enhances our strategic relationships with the world leading silicon and wafer manufacturers. Suntech will continue to pursue our goals to expand our market share and focus on our ongoing initiatives to make production and technological improvements to our cell and module products.” The 5-year agreement is structured as a take-or-pay contract with a pre-determined fixed price that decreases on an annual basis. This price reduction curve will provide Suntech with wafers with an average cost measurably below spot market prices. The delivery of wafers under the contract is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2007. “This is the fourth long term agreement on wafers that REC has entered into since summer this year. Suntech, which […]

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Millennium Cell Reports 3Q Results

Millennium Cell Inc. (NASDAQ: MCEL) has reported a net loss for the quarter ended September 30, 2006 of $2.1 million, or $0.04 per share, as compared to a net loss of $3.4 million, or $0.08 per share in the same period of 2005. Cash used in operating activities for the nine months ended September 30, 2006 was $5.5 million as compared to $6.6 million in the prior year, a decrease of $1.1 million. The decrease was mainly due to increased cost reimbursements under the Company’s government funded programs and lower professional fees in 2006 as compared to 2005. “Millennium Cell is focused on the commercialization of its hydrogen battery technology with its fuel cell licensees and partners in four key portable power markets; military, industrial, medical and consumer electronics. We have achieved considerable traction in the military market to date and we are now working on opportunities for industrial market introduction of our technology as early as next year. I will now share our most recent progress in both of these key early adopting markets,” commented CEO H. David Ramm. “In early July, the company was awarded a $730,000 Phase ll Small Business Innovation Research Program contract from the U.S. […]

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Budgets Falling in Race to Fight Global Warming

By Andrew C. Revkin, October 30, 2006 DENVER – Cheers fit for a revival meeting swept a hotel ballroom as 1,800 entrepreneurs and experts watched a PowerPoint presentation of the most promising technologies for limiting global warming: solar power, wind, ethanol and other farmed fuels, energy-efficient buildings and fuel-sipping cars. “Houston,” Charles F. Kutscher, chairman of the Solar 2006 conference, concluded in a twist on the line from Apollo 13, “we have a solution.” Hold the applause. For all the enthusiasm about alternatives to coal and oil, the challenge of limiting emissions of carbon dioxide, which traps heat, will be immense in a world likely to add 2.5 billion people by midcentury, a host of other experts say. Moreover, most of those people will live in countries like China and India, which are just beginning to enjoy an electrified, air-conditioned mobile society. The challenge is all the more daunting because research into energy technologies by both government and industry has not been rising, but rather falling. In the United States, annual federal spending for all energy research and development – not just the research aimed at climate-friendly technologies – is less than half what it was a quarter-century ago. It […]

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Allies Dressed In Green

By Thomas L. Friedman, October 27, 2006 Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Western allies have been asking: What will replace the threat of communism as the cement that holds together the Atlantic alliance? Some have argued terrorism, but I don’t think so. I think my German friends have the best idea: the issue that will and should unite the West is energy and all its challenges. After all, nothing is a bigger threat today to the Western way of life and quality of life than the combination of climate change, pollution, species loss, and Islamist radicalism and petro-authoritarianism – all fueled by our energy addictions. And no solution is possible to these problems without concerted government actions to reduce emissions, to inspire green innovation and to shift from oil to renewable power. Therefore, green is not just the new red, white and blue – the next great American national security project – it should also be the color, focus and cement of the Atlantic alliance in the 21st century. As a German official remarked to me, “The whole issue has the potential of becoming a big trans-Atlantic project at a time when we have no other good […]

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