The bureaucrats studied "energy cost"? !! How about actual economic cost? Nothing said! That would imply there's no good news. The energy cost is useful only if a number of other conditions are met, starting with there being a reliable way to forecast future climate - which there is not.

And their energy efficiency is? And their cost per kw is?

They can claim what ever they want, they just cannot make it true. I can't see how this means anything unless these particular Solar cells are to cheap to be worthwhile

Good .. but: Why not tell us what this stuff is~~!!

Pretty great that solar is becoming so efficient. In doing so it opening up lots of new areas where it can be used. One thing that will always be even better than efficient energy production is using less energy in the first place. Now that is not easy, but an area often almost ignored is isolation. Fx. the energy used to make rockwool aka stone wool isolation is saved 100-130 times over with the isolation it brings - and isolation can be about both keep warm and keeping cool.

Even if these panels become viable, they won't be much cheaper than silicone based panels. The industry would find a way to support high prices. Hopefully it will cause a revolution that will just wash high-priced suppliers out of the way. I hope this is what happens to the auto insurance industry when autonomous cars roll in. They are already thinking of ways around this. If the death toll drops from 40k per year to under 1k per year, there is no need for so much insurance. And why should liability increase if accidents decrease? I shudder at the thought of how this will turn out.

@piperTom "The bureaucrats studied "energy cost"? !! How about actual economic cost? Nothing said! That would imply there's no good news." First, they're scientists, not bureaucrats. As a bureaucrat, I can assure you that my job is not at all similar to theirs. Second, nothing said about economic cost simply means that they didn't study it. It's a separate matter. "The energy cost is useful only if a number of other conditions are met, starting with there being a reliable way to forecast future climate - which there is not." I think we can be fairly sure the sun will keep shining. If it doesn't, we won't have to think about energy costs anyway.

@piperTom: "Bureaucrats": what a dimwitted, Reagan-era rhetorical ploy. Economic costs are less than silicon, which is ALREADY AT GRID PARITY. That this obvious is left unsaid implies nothing except in your own fever dreams of conspiracy. And of course, saying that we can't know if Global Warming is real, is just you telling us that you've lost touch with reality. Today's Conservative, ladies and gentlemen.

@JohnRAllen: Yeah scientists make a lot of claims, like that the earth rotates around the sun. I guess to you that means it doesn't. Insightful! And things getting both better and cheaper means they're 'not worthwhile', now that's some grade A thinking right there! Conservative Logic.

piperTom: Economic costs are actually dependent upon energy costs. if a product requires say, 100kWh to make and it only generates say 600kWh, there will be less of a value than if it generates 2MWh. Also, and more importantly, the device has to get an energy payback of at least 7, according to other studies which point out the fact that civilization needs abundant energy above that which is needed to collect and store energy. This is why it is very important for scientists, you know, the people who try VERY hard at school and college to understand physics and chemistry, too do research so that when we deplete or fossil fuels, we'll have a backup plan. Also, it's not wise to alter the co2 content of the entire atmosphere, thus, another reason to use fossil fuels more WISELY.