The cost of atmospheric and other pollution is difficult to measure. The cost of lowering atmospheric and other pollution is a much easier issue. To my way of thinking, pollution is always an economic issue.

Recently, Obama and Xi reached an agreement to reduce Green House Gasses (GHG). The US agreed to reduce GHG 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025. Currently, 2013, US GHG levels are about 10% below 2005. Debate, in the US, centers on the cost to the economy to achieve the reduction.

For China's part, China will continue to increase GHG levels until 2030 when, according to Chinese government estimates, GHG levels will stop increasing "naturally." China is, today, the world's largest GHG generator.

China has always claimed the worsening pollution is an inevitable cost of development. Only in the last 5-10 years have the leaders realized sustainability includes air and water.

How quick and easy it is to blame GREED and CORPORATE GREED. More that, it is trite and infantile. Solar Two, and Solar One before it, were research projects to develop solar technology for electricity generation. HFCAMPO should have read the whole article. Solar Tres, being built in Spain, capitalizes on the research and technologies developed at Solar One/Two. This research project was funded, in part, by a corporation.

A publicly held companies are not IPOs. An Initial Public Offering (IPO) is an event in the life of a publicly owned corporation. In the US, an IPO marks the initial sale of stock to the public and SEC registration of a 'C' corporation as well as being listed on a stock market. Most shareholders in publicly traded companies have little or no influence on the way a corporation is managed. The US and UK corporations are similar in this respect. Only shareholders with significant positions have influence.

I have driven past Solar One/Two several times and the place fascinated me. I had spent some time looking into Photovoltaic (PV) investment and employment opportunities and solar-thermal power generation was interesting. Unfortunately, both the high cost and low efficiencies seemed to me to limit potential markets to specialty use and areas where the cost of electric transmission lines was prohibitive. Proponents of solar generated power are pleased the cost per KWH using the sun is now down to about $1. Sounds good but I pay $.10 per KWH delivered. All alternative power methods require massive government subsidies, tax incentives and giveaways to interest investors. Free energy indeed.

For Finance majors the five papers were required. The students had to pay the publisher to get the paper published. Other majors had different requirements. As nearly all students got their undergrad degrees at the same school. I am pretty sure all this was known and accepted as part of the game.

I taught postgrad Finance students who were Masters candidates in Beijing. They were required to publish five papers in five different publications. Cost to publish was 500 and up and totaled nearly 5000. As Serrure said, content did not seem to be an issue.

Certain senior professors would specify which publication to publish in. The cost was pretty steep for some students.

@darkone I was not required to publish when I got my Masters in the US. I was required to provide five bound copies of my thesis.