Bush Backs High-Tech Energy Sources

He has focused on a buffet of technological recipes. Some are beginning to show up in the marketplace, such as hybrid cars running on gasoline and electric. Some are basic but still rare, such as solar and wind power; some are exotic, among them the use of agricultural waste products to fuel motor vehicles; and some are as prosaic as coal-fired power plants, but as poetic as plants that would emit zero pollutants.
He said he was looking ahead to the day when solar panels are built into roofing materials, and houses can send to the electric grid the energy they create but do not use.

“We want solar power to be commonplace by 2015,” Bush said.

Later, he flew to Michigan to tour United Solar Ovonic, north of Pontiac, at which a 100-yard-long machine turns out hydronated amorphous silicon triple band-gap panels (more commonly known as solar panels), no thicker than one micron, or about one-tenth the width of a human hair, to turn sunlight into direct current electricity.

latimes