A trio of U.S. senators introduced this week a bill to spur solar manufacturing jobs in the United States. But would the tax incentives be enough to keep solar power companies producing in the United States? As some Chinese companies move to open U.S. plants, some American companies outsource overseas.

At an industry conference this week, competing solar panel makers took the stage for a talk called “Surviving the Solar Shakeout.” The executives ended up shaking hands instead.

The nascent solar power sector and the natural gas industry need to build an alliance to get more government support and take over the energy sector from incumbents like Big Oil and King Coal, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said on Wednesday.

In a new report, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that the cost of going solar fell by more than 30 percent from 1998 to 2008, dropping from $10.80 per watt to $7.50 per watt.

While solar power has investors on Wall Street seeing green, countries in the developing world also see a bright future in solar technology.

California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is working to burnish his green legacy in the Golden State. But one of his latest moves to lift a hold on air pollution permit applications is not likely to make environmentalists happy.

Time will tell if patent lawsuits will color the clean technology industry, but a settlement this week between California-based solar power company SunPower Corp and SunLink may shed light on things to come.

Will the emerging industry of biofuel from algae end up looking like Big Oil or Big Agriculture? One early industry leader is betting on the latter.

SolarCity, which installs residential solar systesm, is building a charging corridor between Los Angeles and San Francisco that will include a solar-powered charging station.

Utilities across the United States are rushing to a federal stimulus program that is doling out money to create a “smart grid” — systems that will modernize the electricity grid and give consumers more control over how much energy they use.

A survey by Global Solar Center gives an “apples to apples” comparison for the cost of solar power in all 50 states by looking at the cash payback for residential and commercial systems.

San Jose, California-based SunPower Corp has banked on building a brand, a strategy that bucks the idea others argue — that brands don’t matter in the solar power industry because the renewable energy is essentially a commodity.