Outsourcing, Solar, and more
Several news stories that caught my attention today:
The Financial Times reports on an increasing number of UK based companies that are reversing outsourcing strategies and bring production “back home”. The bigger trend remains in the other direction of course, but it is interesting to see how creative companies can get about reducing costs locally when they run into difficulties in low cost countries. If it is this difficult from the UK to poland, consider the difficulties from the US to China…
There were two “thermal” solar stories in the last two days. One from Bloomberg about a deal involving Chevron and Google and one from the LA Times about an Edison deal with ESolar. One with parabolic mirrors and one with flat mirrors, yet both seem to have a similar output per acre of land dedicated to collection structures. not enough information to compare the installed cost basis or the $ per kWH for each plant. Still, if we need 1000 acres (exposed to 340 days/year of sunlight) for every 120000 or so homes, I think this is a very limited technology in its ability to solve our energy needs.
Finally, the Grey Old Lady reports that not one, but TWO men were arrested today for climbing the NYT building. At seems that neither of them will qualify for the Darwin Awards this year as then both were safely returned to ground level (in handcuffs).
