We have glass that makes electricity.
Transparent solar panels exist.
Not in the theoretical.
Not in the future.
Now.
Ubiquitous Energy’s ClearView Power coating achieves over 10% efficiency while maintaining 90% visible transparency. You can see through it. You can generate power through it. It works. Every window in every skyscraper becomes a power plant. Every greenhouse. Every car sunroof. Every phone screen. Every glass surface on the planet becomes a generator.
Global glass production capacity exceeds 8 billion square feet per year. That’s 8 billion potential solar panels we’re currently using to let light in and nothing else.
And the company that cracked this technology is dying.
Ubiquitous Energy is an MIT spinoff. Founded 2011 by a group of MIT and MSU scientists. They solved transparent solar. They developed coatings that could turn any window into a power source. They partnered with NSG Group, one of the world’s largest glass manufacturers. They had a vision. One billion square feet installed globally by 2050 – April 2024. They furloughed their employees. By month’s end, they terminated them. The company doesn’t expect to remain open past May. The technology that could revolutionize energy generation couldn’t survive the market that’s supposedly revolutionizing energy generation. The technology works. The business model doesn’t.
Because capitalism doesn’t fund solutions.
It funds profit.
The planet is burning now. The technology exists now. The urgency doesn’t. One billion square feet by 2050 is a death sentence written in corporate timelines. We don’t have until 2050. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we need to cut emissions by 43% by 2030. 2030. Not 2050. The technology that could help get us there is being allowed to die because it doesn’t generate the right kind of returns.
The critics will come. They always do. They’ll say transparent solar is less efficient than opaque panels. True. Ubiquitous Energy achieves above 10% efficiency. Traditional panels hit 20 to 22%. But a skyscraper has orders of magnitude more window space than roof space. Lower efficiency times massive surface area equals massive generation.
The math works.
The coating can be applied using standard industrial equipment. This isn’t bespoke technology. It’s scalable. It’s deployable. It’s ready. Regular solar was expensive and inefficient once too. Now it’s cheaper than coal. Scale drives down cost. Deployment drives innovation. We don’t wait for perfection. We deploy and iterate.
Then there’s the agricultural revolution we’re ignoring. Semi-transparent solar modules on greenhouse roofs transmit the light plants need while harvesting the rest. Two crises solved at once. Energy and food. Brite Solar’s semi-transparent modules increased crop yields by up to 93% in test greenhouses. 93%. More food. More power. Same surface. In a world facing climate-driven food insecurity, this technology addresses both problems simultaneously. And we’re not deploying it at scale because the system doesn’t solve crises. It feeds on them.
About 733 million people had no access to electricity in 2020. That’s not a statistic. That’s 733 million people who can’t refrigerate food, charge a phone, or turn on a light after the sun goes down. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, about 568 million people lack access to electricity. Health clinics without refrigeration for vaccines. Students who can’t study after dark. Businesses that can’t operate past sunset. That’s 568 million people who could have power from the windows in their homes and greenhouses and community buildings if the technology that exists right now was deployed at the scale the crisis demands.
But the technology is dying.
The company that cracked it is laying people off. The timeline stretches to 2050. And 568 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa sit in the dark while the glass that could light their lives gets used to let the sun in and nothing else.
The cost argument will be used against this. Transparent solar costs more than regular glass. The premium is real. But regular solar was expensive once too. Scale drives down cost. Deployment drives innovation.
And let’s talk about what we’re actually subsidizing…
About $7 trillion was spent subsidizing the fossil fuel industry in 2022. Seven trillion. For the technology that’s burning the planet. The building-integrated photovoltaics market was worth $29 billion in 2024. Projected to hit $138 billion by 2034. Sounds impressive until you compare it to fossil fuel subsidies. The market is growing. The market is also being strangled by the competition’s political power.
The human cost of delay is the same as every other climate story. Every year we don’t deploy this at scale is another year of emissions. Another year of asthma and cancer from air pollution. Another year of extreme weather killing people. Another year of energy poverty for the millions who can’t afford electricity. The technology to address multiple crises exists. The will doesn’t. The policy doesn’t. The funding doesn’t. The timeline stretches to 2050. That’s not urgency. That’s a death sentence delivered at a pace that preserves profit.
The vision is what makes this different. Every window generating power. Every building energy-independent. A distributed grid that can’t be monopolized. Power that belongs to everyone.
This isn’t fantasy. This is engineering. This is physics. This is technology that exists right now. Ubiquitous Energy cracked the code. They couldn’t survive commercially. Revolutionary technology dies every day because capitalism doesn’t fund solutions. It funds profit. Fossil fuel companies have known about climate change for fifty years and spent those decades lying about it while the planet burned. Utility monopolies fight distributed generation because they can’t monopolize the sun. The political system subsidizes oil with trillions while solar gets crumbs and the technology that could turn every window into a power plant gets to die on the vine.
We have glass that makes energy.
What the fuck are we doing with anything else?
The answer is the same answer as it always is…
Capitalism.
Greed and power…
A system that would rather let 568 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa sit in the dark than let them generate electricity from their own windows. A system that would rather let the planet burn than let you power it from the glass you’re already looking through. The technology is here. The applications are staggering. The barrier is the same barrier it always is.
The blade is in the calculus.
The blood is on the glass.
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