http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/news/local/story/721043.html Posted on Fri, Dec. 26, 2008
Renewable energy's future takes root in N.C. companies
State cultivates industry, promotes use with law
By Bruce Henderson
McClatchy Newspapers
The ethereal orange glow of plasma, captured inside a westside industrial park, casts new light on the energy future of Charlotte, N.C.
The startup company Sencera uses the electrically charged gas to make solar panels. It's among the renewable-energy firms reaching for a toehold in a region dominated by coal and nuclear power.
Economic developers, sniffing new business, say Sencera's 15 employees could be among the first of thousands of such jobs in the region. Those workers, they say, could not only generate electricity from the sun, wind and plants but make parts for the machinery of a growing industry.
Even as North Carolina's wind power waits to be commercially harnessed, said University of North Carolina at Greensboro geographer Keith Debbage, "we can be a key supplier to wind energy anywhere in the world."
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