Airlines positioned for big gains in efficiency

Planes are being built out of the same lightweight materials used for Formula 1 race cars. Their engines are being redesigned to squeeze more thrust out of every gallon of fuel. And governments are developing air-traffic systems that will allow airlines to fly shorter routes.

Those and other advances have positioned airlines for the biggest gains in fuel efficiency since the dawn of the jet age in 1958. For airlines, more efficient jets will reduce their biggest expense. For passengers, it means fares won't jump around as much with the price of oil.

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GE Betting on Big Solar

General Electric is breaking into the solar business in a major way. In April, GE announced it had built a solar module with the highest publicly reported efficiency rate for cadmium telluride thin film — the most popular low-cost solar technology. The commercial module topped out at 12.8%, according to independent testers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory — nearly 3 percentage points higher than the industry average. (The efficiency rate is the percentage of the sun's energy a solar panel can convert to electricity.)

Those record-breaking solar modules will eventually be manufactured at a U.S. facility set to open in 2013 that will be the biggest solar factory in the country. The news means GE — which already has a wind-energy business worth some $6 billion — could be ready to dominate solar much as it leads the way in wind. "This is the beginning of what we see as a global competition," says Victor Abate, GE's vice president of renewables.

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Surging China costs forces some U.S. manufacturing companies back home

MILWAUKEE — On a recent morning at Master Lock's 90-year-old factory in Milwaukee, a cluster of machinery was whirring, every 2 seconds spitting out one of the combination locks used by American high schoolers as the company readied for the back-to-school rush.

The seven-day-a-week, three-shift-per-day whirlwind of activity marked a change from two years ago, when the machine normally ran for just a few hours a day because the unit of Fortune Brands Inc was ordering more padlocks from suppliers in China instead of making them.

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