On one hand, the soaring oil price produces many challenges to the world such as higher inflation, slower economy and more political turmoils due to oil price hike. On the other hand, it also creates many opportunities for a number of emerging markets and technology such as energy-efficient chips, solar cell, hybrid car, green architecture, green lifestyle and other alternative forms of energy. Take for instance hybrid cars, the demand of hybrid cars has increased rapidly in recent months (Ref).

Few days ago, Toyota alleged that to meet the strong demand of hybrid cars, it will double the number of hybrid car output by early 2010s (Ref). Ironically, few years ago, people were still mocking at hybrid cars as something non-practical and non-cost effective. However, people are now embracing hybrid cars as a savior of world energy crisis. Who knows hybrid cars may one day become the mainstream if the oil price keeps increasing in the current rate.

Besides hybrid cars are riding on the current wave of energy crisis, the solar industry is also getting a big push from the recent spate of oil price hikes. Norway’s Renewable Energy Corp (REC) has recently announced it will invest close to 13 billion Norwegian crowns ($2.51 billion) in the first phase of a production complex in Singapore. The plant is scheduled to commence production in the first quarter 2010 and ramp-up from Q2’10 and Q4’10, and reach full capacity of 740 (megawatts) of wafers, 550 MW of cells and 590 MW of modules before 2012 (Ref). Singapore is almost certain to become the world’s largest production of solar wafers, thanks to the soaring oil price.

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