This is a story I’ve been watching carefully, and now it’s official: a Silicon Valley start-up has succeeded in printing out thin sheets of solar panels for the cost of $1 per watt. That makes solar power cheaper that coal.

The company, called Nanosolar, has some powerful backers including Google–and it already has an 18 month backlog of orders. It basically prints films of solar panels on an aluminum type substance that is thin and flexible. These films can be deployed anywhere relatively easily.

So now the technology has proven that it is possible to out-do dirty fossil fuel–the only thing that remains is the will power and the investment dollars to make it happen fast. How about diverting some Iraq dollars to a far better cause than butchering people who don’t want us there, and getting a new president who gets that we need to immediately break our fossil fuel addiction?

You can help make it all happen in November 2008.

Tags: nanosolar, solar-power