Study assesses solar photovoltaic technologies

An MIT assessment of solar energy technologies concludes that today's widely used crystalline silicon technology is efficient and reliable and could feasibly be deployed at the large scale needed to mitigate climate change by midcentury. But novel photovoltaic (PV) technologies now being developed using specially designed nanomaterials may one day provide significant advantages. They could be easier and cheaper to manufacture; they could be made into ultrathin, lightweight, flexible solar cells