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On November 8, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a $50-million collaboration which the two nations hope will identify cheaper solar power solutions.
Gillard, elected in June, and Clinton, an Obama appointee who took office in January of 2009, want to see consumer prices for solar power technologies come down as much as two to four times their current rate, leveling the cost playing field between solar energy and fossil-fuel power within five years.
Addressing attendees at a press conference at Pixel House, Gillard said that the government-managed Australian Solar Institute would supervise the $50 million Australian contribution allocated in the 2010 federal budget. Clinton also announced a $500,000 grant from the U.S. State Department to Australia’s Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, another state-operated institution, to fund the initiative.
The Solar Institute plans to look into dual-junction solar photovoltaic (PV) devices (for multiple-layer thin-film applications), hot-carrier solar cells (utilizing a wider range of high-energy electrons), and high-temperature receivers for concentrating solar power (CSP) applications.
The Pixel House, or Pixel Building, completed in March of 2010, is the brainchild of Grocon, an Australian developer, Architects Studio 505, the designer, and Umow Lai, the environmental engineering firm, who agree that the building’s carbon neutral status is one step up from carbon zero.
As Clinton pointed out, solar PV modules have come down in price considerably over the past three years, largely as a result of a global economic recession and a glut of both solar cells and solar panels on the worldwide market. But the technology will only become ubiquitous when prices fall about 75 percent and uptake reaches the same ratio as cell phones.
The news is very good for Australia, and promises to scale back threats to solar energy uptake, like the recent New South Wales cutbacks in solar feed-in tariffs.
Australia has a renewable energy mandate of at least 20 percent from renewable energy sources by 2020, and has established $5.1 billion in funding to make it happen. This mandate is also expected to generate $19 billion in related investments, according to Gillard, who met with Clinton during Clinton’s last stop on her Asia-Pacific tour.
Photo is a combo of Troy & Marc Nozell pictures via Flickr CC
