No limelight for solar energy

You can tell the place of solar technology in Australia's energy schema through the difference in the website domains of the two arms of our world famous Darwin-Adelaide biennial eco-rally. The Global Green Challenge is a dotcom (globalgreenchallenge.com.au). Quite right too, given its status as an automotive marketi-gras, an opportunity for auto makers to gussie up their product as a float for the sustainability conga line from Darwin to Adelaide.

The World Solar Challenge, on the other hand, is an altogether quieter affair, and not just because it's restricted to silent solar-generated electric power. The event that gave rise to the whole GGC circus is a dotorg (wsc.org.au). In other words, it's geeksville.

Here's a neat way to gauge where mainstream Australia stands on the matter of solar power: how do you perceive it? Chances are you think it's okay for warming pools and lighting garden paths, but after that it's all bearded blokes in socks and sandals discussing research grants with Robyn Williams on Radio National, right? Even in the age of climate change, it has yet to gain traction as a mainstream consumer power proposition.

Victor Bivell, editor of Eco Investor magazine, concluded in The Australian a year ago that while Australia's seven ASX-listed specialist solar enterprises are propelled by plenty of powerful intellectual property, "the high quality of the technology is not, or not yet, supported by the financials of the businesses."

But for how long? The thing about solar energy is, it's there, everywhere. Pouring down on us, hot and strong, 12 hours or more every day. With enough intensity that a tract of photovoltaic (PV) panelling stretching from Maralinga, in South Australia, to the Northern Territory border could fulfil the entire world's demand for energy.

"That's theoretically, anyway. But it's pretty amazing, isn't it?" asks Chris Selwood, event director for the World Solar Challenge and, not surprisingly, an avowed solar advocate. This scenario, he says, hails from a 1980s study by two Colorado scientists, Frank Kreith and Jan S Kreider.

They concluded it was theoretically possible any place where solar energy hit Earth at an average 2350 kWh per square metre or more. There are plenty of such places. At the time of the study, a realistic efficiency figure for PV cell energy uptake was around 20 per cent, and world energy demand was estimated at around 120 trillion kilowatt hours per day. Solar energy incursion in the lands north of Maralinga in SA averaged around 3000 kWh per square metre at the time, from which the study's authors concluded it would take a 500 kilometre square of photovoltaic panelling to sate world demand.

Of course, as they say in adland, conditions apply. Variables have varied. Population has jumped by a billion people or more since then, energy demand with it. And that won't be abating any time soon with economic development in China and India.

And even if PV technology has come a long way since then, 25,000 square kilometres of panelling – think of a square with sides stretching half the distance from Sydney to Melbourne – is hardly viable. Installation? A multi-decade nightmare. Maintenance? Impossible. Even a facility to fulfil Australia's own energy demands would present massive upkeep costs. Then, of course, there's the strategic risk of concentrating all your energy eggs into one geographical basket in the event of conflict.

And that's before the laws of physics cut in. Once it's all up and running, we'd see a fair proportion of the energy it produced dissipate during transmission through thousands of kilometres of cable. Then there's the eternal conundrum of storage.

But inside Australia's 7.69 million square kilometres, even that global-scale facility is pretty small. And not even Barnaby Joyce would argue that the intensity of Central Australian sunlight is diminishing. So the point remains, even if just to demonstrate the magnitude of nature's gift.

But even while such questions hover over the practicalities of it, the principal question remains: why are we making so little of this massive natural resource? It's an issue reflected in a serious brain drain Australia has suffered over recent years: several of the world's top solar researchers have decamped for greener pastures in the face of public and private sector indifference on home turf.

Like virtually anyone in the alternative energy business, Selwood, while not a man given to open despair, is jaded on the matter of Australian social and political attitudes to solar energy and climate change. On the latter, he'll tell you that regardless of the results of leadership spills, policy turnarounds or even elections, not much changes on climate change. Labor or Coalition in power, CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) or no CPRS, bulldozed through parliament now or delayed month after month, in the eyes of climate change believers, the polluters-must-pay rhetoric far outweighs any serious policy shift aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, be it by making polluters pay or otherwise.

"I think even the uninitiated have a sense that the federal government is playing politics, mucking around the edges. They want -- need -- to be seen to do something without actually doing anything that would upset conventional energy interests with any demand that anyone actually change their habits."

He concurs that we're not the only one. China's projected auto industry growth figures reduced its recent announcements to a lot of noise from a big vessel, too. An announcement of a 40 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 sounds like impressive ammo against our five. Until you start reading the fine print, at which point you come to realise you're witnessing what Selwood simply calls "more smoke and mirrors".

China's escape clause is that the much vaunted 40 per cent is to be measured only against economic growth between now and 2020, so it's not 40 percent down on current levels. The other important point to be noted is China's refusal to accept any outside scrutiny.

On the upside, China is expected to experience massive economic and industrial growth over the next decade, with equal potential for massive adverse impact on the natural environment. The fear is of a newly minted middle class all driving around in cars they haven't been able to afford before. "But never mind the running of the cars," says Selwood. "First look at the production of the cars. The IEA (International Energy Agency -- the OECD's Paris-based energy arm) predicts their light vehicle fleet will grow from 40 million to more than 200 million in the next 20 years. And that's nothing to worry about?"

This is particularly noteworthy coming from the IEA, he says. "Only a few years ago, they were optimistic about the future of oil -- it's a $3 trillion industry, so they were always in search of cause for optimism."

Until 2007, when the Agency's report saw a dramatic change in tack. "It basically says we have to move swiftly and decisively beyond fossil fuels if we're to avert a crisis of epic proportions."

This isn't just about greenhouse gases, Selwood continues. It's also about getting in early with ways to tease out the supply of oil, destined to remain the primary feedstock for so much of the world's predicted future growth. "So we can't afford to waste it on mobility the way we do now, he says. "That's why I think the term 'fuel efficiency' applied to motor cars is oxymoronic."

Consider this. "Petrol starts out with an impressive energy density -- around 35 megajoules a litre. But the internal combustion engine loses 62 percent of that in heat and the inherent inefficiency of the reciprocating cycle, and my scientific colleagues tell me another 17 percent is lost at idle.

"Which means we've already wasted 79 percent of the fuel's potential energy before we move an inch. And when we do get going, another eight percent dissipates through the drivetrain."

None of this is helped by the load imposed on the engine. "An average car weighs 1500-1600 kg, while the average person weighs maybe 70-80kg. So you can see the car spends 20 times as much energy moving itself than it does the driver. In the end, less than one percent of fuel is used to move the driver. Even with the car loaded up it's still four or five to one."

Considering the IEA estimates there are currently about 870 million cars in operation worldwide, almost all of them one percent efficient, it's enough to raise an eyebrow over claims about where the business case is and where we might like to direct it. Because through all the argy bargy, the accusations of lying and denying about climate change, the progressive placard waving and conservative obfuscation, the sun just keeps coming up every morning, bathing us in energy for 12 hours and slipping off to give equal time to those on the other side of the planet.

(And, Selwood adds in the course of our conversation, the Colorado study shows that as it traces its path over there it drops enough energy on the eastern Sahara to supply all of Europe, and enough on an area around the California-Mexico border to supply the US.)

Much of this helps explain something else Australia is letting slip though its fingers at what Selwood and other solar advocates see as an alarming rate: intellectual property. As Eco Investor's Bivell, pointed out, our university science faculties are not short of talent. What they are short of is funding, care of a relatively small economy and a conservative private sector given to familiar risk paths and short-term gratification.  This is a pity, he says, given that massive if mercurial energy source hovering over the yawning openness of our interior.

Selwood and other solar exponents remain frustrated by our tardiness. Yes, there are hurdles, some of them considerable. But other countries less blessed than ourselves are overcoming  them. Often, most frustratingly, with the help of technologies developed in Australia and hocked offshore.

Over the last three decades, Australia has seen an exodus of intellectual property as one solar innovator after another decamps overseas in search of commercial and government funding they can't find here.

Most recent -- and vociferous -- was Canadian professor David Mills, who spent 30 years in Australia, garnering a worldwide reputation here for his work on space-efficient solar collector and boiler systems. In 2007, a frustrated Mills took his company, Ausra, to California. There, he had little trouble finding the venture capital it needed.

On the eve of his departure, Mills told the ABC's The 7.30 Report that 75 percent of the world's solar collectors are made in China, and 80 per cent of them use technology born and bred at the University of Sydney. There has been "a failure of business on several counts", he said.

Buried contact solar cell technology, developed at UNSW, is now manufactured under licence by commercial interests in Spain or Switzerland. Promising evacuated tube and PV glazing technologies have departed for China and Japan respectively.

Crystalline silicon on glass (CSG) technology -- a method of culturing silicon in a laboratory, dramatically boosting its supply -- emerged from UNSW's Centre for Photovoltaic Studies under the stewardship of professors Martin Green and Stuart Wenham. A PhD student of theirs, Zhengrong Shi, took the technology to China in 2004 and set up the Nasdaq-listed, multibillion dollar Suntech, now the world's largest manufacturer of crystalline silicon PV modules.

Meanwhile Pacific Solar, a joint venture company formed by UNSW and energy utility Pacific Power, sold CSG manufacturing rights to a German outfit, CSG Solar.

Even Solahart, the Australian concern whose name sits on so many of the nation's rooftops, sold out to Japanese company Paloma in 2001.

Many of the corporate entities associated with Australian-developed solar technologies keep a set of feet on the ground in this country, and Australian researchers receive rights, royalties and dividends from their efforts. But the real margin comes from shifting units, and the true value of commercialising these technologies to that extent continues to elude a risk-averse local investment sector.

All of which provides a pointer to the value of the World Solar Challenge. First, there's the simple economic impact of the event. After the 2007 race, this was objectively assessed at around $10 million. At the time of writing, the figures hadn't been fully realised for the 2009 event, but it's expected to come in well in excess of that figure. With the Global Green Challenge, the event saw about 1,000 participants, including support crews and media, contributing to local economies along its route in direct income, profile and business opportunities.

But this represents only a tiny element of the event's true impact. Indeed, that impact extends well beyond raising awareness of solar technology and a number of its automotive subsets. The WSC plays a crucial role in its evolution by pitting different iterations competitively against one another and against nature over a gruelling 3,000 km course. As such, it draws attention not just to the imperatives of sustainable transport, but delivers viability and cost-benefit analyses of different approaches.

This is why the emphasis the race places on real-life operating conditions is so important. The WSC runs on real roads, meaning the competing technologies are put to the test in the conditions under which they will be used if they achieve critical mass for market acceptance. And the race evolves year to year to reflect those conditions more accurately. For example, the 2009 race demanded the use of regular mass market tyres in place of the low-resistance ones used in the past.

As the hardcore green element of the Global Green Challenge, the WSC sits at the pointy end of the auto industry's efforts to reduce its carbon footprint. If the GGC showcases the interim technologies -- diesels, hybrids, plug-ins, EVs -- the WSC demonstrates the possibilities residing deeper in the future. "It basically shows how much more we can do with how much less," as Selwood puts it.

As that becomes more important, perhaps one day the WSC might earn itself a dotcom web address.

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