Corn ethanol unprofitable by 2008, says Iowa State

June 8, 2007 - Exclusive
By Dana Childs, inside greentech

Profits could disappear from the corn ethanol industry by the end of this year, said researchers at Iowa State University, in the latest of a string of doomsday predictions for the industry.
"We think the expected returns to an ethanol plant are zero or negative in 2008," said Bruce Babcock, economist and director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State, in Ames, Iowa [Click here to read full article...]

Applied Materials equipping solar factory start-ups

(Posted by Cyrus)
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com -->
Published: May 16, 2007, 8:36 AM PDT

AUSTIN, Texas--Applied Materials has said for the past year that it will build turnkey equipment for start-up solar-panel factories, and it appears that the company has begun doing just that.
TekSun PV Manufacturing is building a plant for manufacturing 120 megawatts worth of amorphous solar panels a year in Taylor, Texas, CEO Dan Vogler said at the Clean Energy Venture Summit taking place here this week. The production lines for the panels will indeed be turnkey lines provided by another company, he noted. (The 120-megawatt designation refers to the amount of power that, under optimal conditions, could be harvested from all of the panels produced by the factory in one year.)
[To read the original article, please click here]