Oil prices have breached record highs, electricity grids are creaking, and geographies from Australia to the American southwest face severe water stress.

After years of heady growth in the PV market led largely by crystalline silicon, thin-film technology has reached a critical mass and is poised to start taking significant market share from incumbent technology.

From the mobile phones carried by 3.3 billion people to the half a million hybrid electric vehicles sold last year, the world runs on energy storage technologies - the batteries, capacitors, and other devices that play a hidden, vital role in the energy economy.

The solar industry has been on a remarkable run in recent years, attracting the attention of investors, corporations, and policymakers. This activity has inflated a bubble that's primed to burst.

Solar and biofuel technologies have been the investment darlings of the past two years in the cleantech field.