Is Solar the New Dot-Com?

Business 2.0 magazine goes in-depth on the venture capital community's love affair with solar energy and notes that the Sand Hill Road crowd hasn't been this fired up since the dot-com days.

Solar is an $11 billion worldwide market now and California has pledged $3.2 billion for its Million Solar Rooftops initiative. Those numbers will turn more than a few heads are causing solar to leave other alternative energy sources in the dust from a capital infusion standpoint.

The article notes:

The signs of world-changing transformation are everywhere: Venture capitalists are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Valley solar startups pursuing technological breakthroughs to make sun power as cheap as fossil fuel. Three of the largest tech IPOs of 2005 were for solar companies, including San Jose-based SunPower (Charts), a spinoff of chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor.

Other old-line Valley tech companies are also jumping into the market. Among the most significant is Applied Materials (Charts). The world's largest chip-equipment maker will begin producing machines to manufacture solar wafers, laying the groundwork for an industrial infrastructure that should lower the cost of producing solar cells. For the first time in many years, high-tech manufacturing plants - yes, factories - are being built in Silicon Valley.

The piece looks at several Northern California solar start-ups and muses on the California carbon market that is almost sure to develop as companies begin to trade carbon credits.

Regardless of how you feel about solar, it's an interesting read.

Here Comes the Sun [Business 2.0]