Here's a first - a leading political columnist, Thomas L. Friedman of the NY Times, appears to have inadvertently lifted the price of Suntech stock by praising Suntech's CEO as China's leading green entrepreneur.

If you want more information about Suntech Power now - see our AEI page here.

I've got a lot of time for Friedman, having much enjoyed his book "The World is Flat" and like very much his "First Law of Petropolitics". It's absolutely right to be upbeat about what is happening in China and Suntech will certainly not be the last big chinese alternative energy company to succeed. Yet even if Suntech can uniquely get the price of solar down to $2 per watt in the next few years, would they want to sell it at that price?

Probably not if they want to be more profitable and one must always be cautious of the solar dawn story which I can now tell you has been around for 100 years. Today I received photocopies from a book called The Romance of Modern Invention published in 1907 with detailed images and descriptions of working concentrated solar power plants in California. It was amazing to see how much was known then about this technology.