The Citizenre Debate
The technology for the effective harnessing of the renewable resources such as wind, water, sunlight, and so on, is slowly reaching maturity. New corporate entities are emerging in this technology sector and making ambitious promises to their global customers. Citizenre is one such company.
Citizenre is a US based multi-level marketing company. The company is eyeing to exploit the increasing demand for non-conventional energy sources, particularly the solar energy sector.
Solar energy or any other renewable energy source, for that matter, has certain inherent benefits and detriments. The obvious benefits are that its usage creates a neat and clean environment by not using the fossil fuels, and it reduces the monthly expenditure on power consumption.
On the other hand, the detriments are that the technology is still to develop to its full maturity. The silicon solar cell is way too expensive during installation for an average householder to expend upon. And, certain minimum requirements as to its installation and the area specifications make it unsuitable for those places, which face extreme weather conditions. For example; at places where the sun does not shine at all times, the cells will only be working at half their generation capacities. Now, all these conditions are being researched upon by scientists from all over the world. And, they are working hard to come to some solutions at the earliest. In spite of all these technical bottlenecks, Citizenre has already declared to create a supply chain for distributing 1,00,000 domestic generator modules every year. And, that too through the worn out concept of multi-level marketing, which made news during the 1960s and the 70s via the Amway Corporation. Although the company's promise is that this type of an infrastructural planning will make the generator kits more affordable, it could very well turn out to be way too over ambitious. Moreover, the entire planning seems profit driven. It somehow lacks a well thought out strategy. Now, if this was not all, the company has also started collecting public deposits on orders for future delivery. This could turn out to be a totally irrational and a reckless move. Citizenre's ambitious project is targeted at establishing a 500 megawatt vertically integrated solar pv production facility. The competitors of Citizenre are of the view that over promising too much too soon might lead to the suffocation of the industry itself. Moreover, news is abuzz that many, who have been closely associated with Citizenre, over the past, don't see their efforts going anywhere. The 500 megawatt manufacturing plant is supposed to be up and running by September, 2008. Meanwhile, the solar electric industry in the U.S. is set backwards by 5 years. Now, it is up to Citizenre to live up to its promises. While the company is claiming to have started the construction of the proposed plant, many say that no such construction has yet commenced on the proposed site.
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