Monday 29 October 2007

Giant Solar Plant

Oh the vicarious joy of bad headlines (S'pore trumps 200 locations to seal deal for giant solar plant). What they are actually doing is building a new (~£2b) factory to produce photo-voltaic silicon wafers. For export.

So this is not a story about huge vegetables or even a positive environmental tale, something Singapore could do with as it has significantly higher per-capita, energy consumption when bench marked against similarly developed countries (hint: it's the air conditioning).

This is a good news business story as they beat out "more than 200 locations in 18 countries" and even though they were uncompetitive for land, electricity and labour costs, they were selected for economic security and political stability (plus an assumed dollop of incentives from the Economic Development Board). Which about sums up Singapore's whole foreign policy.

See if you can match the neighbouring countries against these descriptions:

  • military coup, corruption
  • institutionalised racism, corruption
  • religious fundamentalism, terrorism, corruption
  • single party state, corruption
  • basket case

The new factory's parent company is Norwegian. It's a no brainer.

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