Shell to acquire 44% stake in US solar developer Silicon Ranch

The pioneering US solar developer will now be backed by Europe's largest oil and gas company. The involvement of oil and gas "supermajors" in clean energy has been an off-again, on-again affair. Perhaps the most well known story was BP's 20-year adventure with solar manufacturing, which ended just as the global solar industry began to ramp up in 2011. A more promising example is Total's majority ownership of SunPower. Shell is also no stranger to solar, as Japan's Showa Shell Sekiyu has been the financial backing behind the world's only large cadmium indium gallium diselenide (CIGS or CIS) solar manufacturer, Solar Frontier. However, today Royal Dutch Shell itself dipped its toes into solar development with a roughly $200 million investment in Tennessee's ...

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