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"There will also be a big focus on renovating older buildings. This sector accounts for 40% of Europe's energy consumption and the proposal aims to create a building renovation market with a value of up to 120bn euros by 2030."

""Our goal is to build rocket engine parts up to 10 times faster and reduce cost by more than 50 percent," said Marshall propulsion engineer and project leader Chris Protz. "We are not trying to just make and test one part. We are developing a repeatable process that industry can adopt to manufacture engine parts with advanced designs. The ultimate goal is to make building rocket engines more affordable for everyone.""

These are heady times for the thin-film solar industry. The sector's dominant player, First Solar, has been on a tear of late, recently announcing it would build a second 10 megawatt power plant in Nevada, while Miasole, once thought to be ailing, has staged an impressive comeback, raking in an eye-popping $220 million. Nanosolar has developed a new ultra-fast solar cell printer, and even giants like IBM and Applied Materials have gotten in on the game. In the face of such intense competition, how will HelioVolt, a well-funded outpost of CIGS manufacturing in Texas, fare? The company hopes a new hybrid, super fast CIGS process it has developed in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which combines its patented FASST process and NREL's non-vacuum deposition technique, will help even the odds. The Austin, Texas-based company licensed NREL's non-vacuum deposition process, which allows for the quick application of liquid precursors onto a printing plate and substrate, to manufacture its solar cells with a 12.2 percent conversion efficiency at a fraction of the regular cost and in record time - under 6 minutes. Another advantage is that the substrate can be made from a variety of building materials, including glass, metals, plastics and roofing materials.

The road to grid parity for PV power generation will be difficult, needing five or more years to compete with utility power, unsubsidized, on a large scale, noted Mark Thirsk, managing partner at Linx Consulting, at a recent SEMI PV forecast luncheon (Sept. 18) in Santa Clara, CA Most input materials for PV production are in relative oversupply and will not constrain production, Thirsk pointed out - and for this reason manufacturers are conservative about capacity investment. In particular, his PV module production forecast (see Fig. 1, above) shows an overstep in demand in 2008. One reason for suppliers' reluctance to build capacity for entering the silicon supply chain is that it is an inefficient process. "Only about 15% of all the silicon going into the supply chain goes into the wafers, so it's a pretty wasteful and capital intensive process, so there is a lot of reluctance to build capacity," said Thirsk. Despite the efficiency challenges, Thirsk's forecast indicates that an oversupply may occur in 2009 Because >40% of PV grade silicon is lost at the wafering step, Thirsk believes this represents a significant opportunity for the right technology. Additionally, diamond wire is a potential replacement for slurry technology, but this technology is still immature. In the crystalline silicon (c-Si) value chain, Thirsk sees opportunities for optimizing mono-crystalline wafers with metal wrap technology and backside contacts; process optimization and material improvements would improve cell efficiency, and glass, wafer, backsheet, and grid improvements can enable more efficient light capture. Looking ahead, Thirsk told the audience that while thin-film technologies will enjoy strong growth "and may be more attractive to value-add materials and equipment suppliers, thin-film cell production will remain a minority share for the medium term." (see Fig. 3, below) He closed his presentation encouraging the creation of a Moore's Law type of roadmap for the PV

The building sector is not investing enough in energy efficiency to reach emissions reductions targets, according to a scathing report published by World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) this week.

It was reported that Sumiden Hitachi Cable, which is Japan's largest joint sales company of building wire controlled by Hitachi Cable, Sumitomo Electric Industries and Tatsuta Electric Wire & Cable, estimates that its sales volume in the second half of the fiscal year ending March 2011 will be flat from the same period a year ago. The company anticipates that total domestic demand for the three leading building wire products, including LV XLPE cable, will average 13,700t copper conductor per month in H2 FY2010, down by 1.8% from the same period of FY2009. It was commented that the market for building wire seems to have reached the bottom, however recovery is weak.

"The EU is considering proposals that could require the upgrade of 15 million buildings across the region by 2020 to reduce their energy use by a fifth, according to a report from Reuters."

"Zhejiang Hailiang Co, China's biggest copper tube producer, plans to invest 200 million yuan ($33 million) to build a copper tube plant in Guangdong province. "

Japan's largest company of building wires and cables, Sumiden Hitachi Cable, which is jointly controlled by Hitachi Cable, Sumitomo Electric Industries and Tatsuta Electric Wire & Cable, says it plans for its sales volume in copper to increase slightly year-on-year for first half of fiscal 2012 beginning in April. The firm forecasts that domestic demand for its three major items, the largest being low voltage XLPE cable, would remain steady y-o-y at around a monthly average volume of 14,500t of copper Sumiden Hitachi Cable estimated that Japanese demand for its three major products increased by 6%y-o-y in H2 2011 to average 15,800t in copper per month. Building wire and cable shipments remained steady for large building projects situated mainly in Tokyo while shipments increased by 20% y-o-y in the Tohoku area as a result of the restorations being undertaken following the earthquake last year. The shipment levels were also boosted by active public facilities construction towards the end of the Japanese major fiscal year in March. Forecasts suggest that in H1 F2012, total demand and shipments would level off as construction projects and restorations following the earthquake would begin to tail off.

Encore Wire Corporation, a leading copper cable-maker for the building sector, has submitted plans to build a 202,000-square-foot facility in McKinney, TX to house aluminium wire production lines. The plans include the employment of 100 staff and the value of the project, which is reported to be $25M. Of Encore Wire's total cable production, it is estimated that 5% of sales revenue are from cable containing aluminium conductor.