First Solar, Inc. (Tempe, Arizona) has issued its 2022 Sustainability Report highlighting its continued, industry-leading environmental, social, and governance (ESG) progress. The only US-headquartered company among the world’s ten largest solar manufacturers, First Solar’s photovoltaic (PV) solar modules are reported to have the lowest carbon and water footprint and fastest energy payback time of any commercially available PV technology today.
For the first time, an efficiency of 30% for perovskite-on-silicon-tandem solar cells has been exceeded thanks to a joint effort led by scientists at EPFL’s Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratory in partnership with the renowned innovation centre, CSEM (Neuchâtel, Switzerland). Independently certified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the United States, these results are a boost to high-efficiency photovoltaics (PV) and pave the way toward even more competitive solar electricity generation.
SALD BV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands), specialist for the surface technology "Spatial Atomic Layer Deposition" (SALD), expects to double its turnover again in 2022. The technology company had already doubled its turnover in 2021. CEO Frank Verhage explains: "Our multi-patented process for applying coatings as thin as a single atom on an industrial scale has the potential to revolutionise entire industries. This transition of technology from the lab to manufacturing is giving us brisk demand from industry." While the company does not publicly disclose exact financial figures, it says it is "open to investors" for the expansion "from lab to fab".
