Arco’s Quick Profit in Its Sale of Solar Technology Is Bad News for the Nation

So Arco, the giant oil company, is turning a quick profit by selling its advanced solar energy technology abroad!

Here is a company that used $4.5 million of U.S. funds and $900,000 of California funds, plus uncounted millions in state and federal tax breaks on energy, to develop the first commercially competitive solar energy system.

Then, after building and putting into operation two solar power plants in California, Arco sells this technology to a West German corporation, pocketing along the way the money contributed by California and U.S. taxpayers.

So the edge in key high-tech industry of the future passes to West Germany and with it the future prospect of as many as l00,000 jobs and billions of dollars of American export sales.

This sale will also prevent America from contributing to the final solution of the triple crisis of our time: energy, air pollution and the greenhouse effect.

Perhaps Arco saw a threat to its oil super-profits in its successful development of economic solar energy.

WILLIAM H. WOOD

Professor Emeritus, physical sciences

Riverside City College