CIGS startup Solyndra has raised over $79 million, but that’s not helping the company keep some of its original engineering talent.

Three key members of the technical side of the company have left the company in the last several months, according to press releases and other sources. Last year, Benny Buller, one of the company’s founding members and the former vice president of engineering and technology at Solyndra, took off to become director of device improvement at First Solar.

In February 2008, Ratson Morad hit the road to join DayStar Technologies as President and COO. Morad also served as a vice president of engineering and technology and was part of Solyndra’s founding team,...

What if you took all the factory capacity in the world to make solar cells and harnessed it to produce renewable energy systems for China. How long would the total output last?

A little over five weeks. Globally, there will be approximately 10.25 gigawatts worth of solar panel manufacturing capacity in the world in 2008, according to the Prometheus Institute. The figure includes both thin film and traditional silicon panels.

China meanwhile dedicates 2GW worth of power plants a week. 10.25 divided by two gives you 36 days. If you could make all the panels and start shipping January 1, it would get you to February 5, give or take a few hours depending on what happens on Groundhog...

Automaker Nissan will announce plans today to launch an electric vehicle in the U.S. and Japan by 2010. In doing so, Nissan will be the first major automaker to bring an EV to the U.S. market. It will expand the line globally by 2012. Nissan is also working with corporate partner Renault on developing an EV for Shai Agassi's Project Better Place, an electric vehicle startup with operations in Silicon Vally and Tel Aviv, and possibly soon Copenhagen. The partnership combines Nissan's research on lithium-ion batteries with Renault vehicles. Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault and Nissan, said recently his companies would spend between $500 million and $1 billion in the next three years...

John McCain: Maverick, POW, environmentalist, old man. Which of these is not like the other? It's actually unimportant, because the best thing about John McCain's environmental policy blitz through Oregon are the zingers that Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, keeps sending his way. Yesterday Carl had us rolling in the aisles with this gem:

"He's certainly better than Bush, and ... the average Republican senator," but "dramatically worse than the average Republican governor.

And today he makes fun of McCain for being old:

"The science on global warming has changed dramatically over the last five years and Senator McCain's previous bill and current proposals are...