Political will is all that's needed to bring electricity to the 2.5 billion people with no or unreliable access to power, or to feed the one billion who go hungry every day, or to finally begin to slash carbon emissions to avoid dangerous climate change, or just about any other global problem.
Humanity has the technology, resources and even the money to solve these problems, agree scientists, corporate business leaders, heads of civil society organisations and United Nations agencies and government ministers. 'All that is lacking is political will,' they almost always declare at the dozens of international conferences, summits and forums this reporter has attended for the past five years. And then everyone goes home.
What is this magical 'political will' that can solve any problem?
It seems it is as simple as deciding to do something and then making sure it happens no matter what. You decide to take a train somewhere. You plan the time and route, book the ticket, pay for it and arrange your life to make sure you get on that train. Every day, we make decisions and carry them out.
'Political will is really about priorities,' says Anders Wijkman, former member of the European Parliament and current vice chair of the Tällberg Foundation, a Swedish NGO.
The priority for Europe and many countries is the current economic crisis and all else is secondary right now, said Wijkman, who has fought to put many important environmental and development issues at the top of the agenda in Europe.
Everyone in the world could have electricity or be fed properly if it were the most important thing for world leaders to do. However, not only are other issues clamouring for attention, there are enormous barriers to doing anything different such as bringing light to the billion people who are left in the dark when the sun goes down.
'You have to remember politicians are more interested in incremental change than transformational change,' Wijkman told IPS at the 2011 Vienna Energy Forum last week.
Some 1,200 delegates from 100 countries attended along with 40 government ministers to discuss how to bring clean, efficient, reliable and affordable energy services for the long-term prosperity of all people. The need for 'political will' was frequently cited.
Political leadership is in fact an oxymoron. It doesn't mean what everyone thinks it does. In off-the-record conversations with retired politicians, they have candidly admitted their first priority as ministers was to ensure their party was re-elected. Taking a leadership role on anything else was viewed as risky and politically dangerous.
'It is up to the public to demand change,' they often told IPS. Unfortunately, the public listens to what politicians say and pays too little attention to what they do.
There are also powerful barriers to changing priorities in the form of special interest groups such as the corporate sector. Renewable energy was and is still strongly opposed by big power utilities, says Wijkman.
Renewable energy is generally small-scale and decentralised, and utilities like big and centralised. Utilities have made their investments in big power generation facilities. 'Extending the operational life of big power plants, be it coal or nuclear, means huge profits at very little cost,' he says. Even in progressive Europe, the fight to shift to renewable energy was difficult. Tough legislation and rich feed-in tariffs are the main reason Europe has been able to reduce its carbon emissions through alternative energy generation even though overall energy demand has risen. And because publicly subsidised coal or oil still does not pay the full costs of their pollution - smog and carbon - renewables are more expensive to install.
'There is an ideology in industry that renewables cannot meet their needs and the only way is with big centralised power,' Wijkman says. However, that is not the case when wind and sun energy is coupled with smart grids, energy storage using water (pumping water uphill when energy demand is low) and intelligent design.
There is an unwillingness to move away from business as usual and there is even fear amongst politicians and the public that change will mean giving up what we are used to and that is why we are not proactive, Wijkman concluded.
The reality is that business as usual cannot be sustained from either an environmental or development point of view, said economist Nebojsa Nakicenovic, deputy director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis located near Vienna.
'A transformation of the global energy system is needed,' Nakicenovic says.
That transformation can bring a wide range of benefits, including cleaner air, better health, more productive societies, a reduction in conflicts, and getting the world on a path to keeping global warming below two degrees C. The triple goals set out at the Vienna Forum of energy for all, energy intensity reduction of 40 percent and generate 30 percent of the world's electricity with renewables would bring those benefits and is doable, he says.
'It is doable only if there is early and sustained investments,' he warns, and only if there are no further investments in coal power plants, and energy gobbling buildings and other infrastructure. But the window of opportunity is already closing. 'If we wait too long it will be too late,' he adds.
The fear is that political leaders will not heed this warning and the necessary energy transformation will not become a top priority until it is too late. It seems that only if the public exerts its will can this outcome be altered.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved
Inkjet Printing Could Change the Face of Solar Energy Industry
Inkjet printers, a low-cost technology that in recent decades has revolutionized home and small office printing, may soon offer similar benefits for the future of solar energy.
Engineers at Oregon State University have discovered a way for the first time to create successful "CIGS" solar devices with inkjet printing, in work that reduces raw material waste by 90 percent and will significantly lower the cost of producing solar energy cells with some very promising compounds.
High performing, rapidly produced, ultra-low cost, thin film solar electronics should be possible, scientists said.
The findings have been published in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, a professional journal, and a patent applied for on the discovery. Further research is needed to increase the efficiency of the cell, but the work could lead to a whole new generation of solar energy technology, researchers say.
"This is very promising and could be an important new technology to add to the solar energy field," said Chih-hung Chang, an OSU professor in the School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering. "Until now no one had been able to create working CIGS solar devices with inkjet technology."
Part of the advantage of this approach, Chang said, is a dramatic reduction in wasted material. Instead of depositing chemical compounds on a substrate with a more expensive vapor phase deposition -- wasting most of the material in the process -- inkjet technology could be used to create precise patterning with very low waste.
"Some of the materials we want to work with for the most advanced solar cells, such as indium, are relatively expensive," Chang said. "If that's what you're using you can't really afford to waste it, and the inkjet approach almost eliminates the waste."
One of the most promising compounds and the focus of the current study is called chalcopyrite, or "CIGS" for the copper, indium, gallium and selenium elements of which it's composed. CIGS has extraordinary solar efficiency -- a layer of chalcopyrite one or two microns thick has the ability to capture the energy from photons about as efficiently as a 50-micron-thick layer made with silicon.
In the new findings, researchers were able to create an ink that could print chalcopyrite onto substrates with an inkjet approach, with a power conversion efficiency of about 5 percent. The OSU researchers say that with continued research they should be able to achieve an efficiency of about 12 percent, which would make a commercially viable solar cell.
In related work, being done in collaboration with Greg Herman, an OSU associate professor of chemical engineering, the engineers are studying other compounds that might also be used with inkjet technology, and cost even less.
Some approaches to producing solar cells are time consuming, or require expensive vacuum systems or toxic chemicals. OSU experts are working to eliminate some of those roadblocks and create much less costly solar technology that is also more environmentally friendly. New jobs and industries in the Pacific Northwest could evolve from such initiatives, they say.
If costs can be reduced enough and other hurdles breached, it might even be possible to create solar cells that could be built directly into roofing materials, scientists say, opening a huge new potential for solar energy.
"In summary, a simple, fast, and direct-write, solution-based deposition process is developed for the fabrication of high quality CIGS solar cells," the researchers wrote in their conclusion. "Safe, cheap, and air-stable inks can be prepared easily by controlling the composition of low-cost metal salt precursors at a molecular level."
This work was supported by the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, the U.S. Department of Energy and OSU's University Venture Development Fund, which helps donors receive tax benefits while sponsoring projects that will bring new technology, jobs and economic growth to Oregon.
Engineers at Oregon State University have discovered a way for the first time to create successful "CIGS" solar devices with inkjet printing, in work that reduces raw material waste by 90 percent and will significantly lower the cost of producing solar energy cells with some very promising compounds.
High performing, rapidly produced, ultra-low cost, thin film solar electronics should be possible, scientists said.
The findings have been published in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, a professional journal, and a patent applied for on the discovery. Further research is needed to increase the efficiency of the cell, but the work could lead to a whole new generation of solar energy technology, researchers say.
"This is very promising and could be an important new technology to add to the solar energy field," said Chih-hung Chang, an OSU professor in the School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering. "Until now no one had been able to create working CIGS solar devices with inkjet technology."
Part of the advantage of this approach, Chang said, is a dramatic reduction in wasted material. Instead of depositing chemical compounds on a substrate with a more expensive vapor phase deposition -- wasting most of the material in the process -- inkjet technology could be used to create precise patterning with very low waste.
"Some of the materials we want to work with for the most advanced solar cells, such as indium, are relatively expensive," Chang said. "If that's what you're using you can't really afford to waste it, and the inkjet approach almost eliminates the waste."
One of the most promising compounds and the focus of the current study is called chalcopyrite, or "CIGS" for the copper, indium, gallium and selenium elements of which it's composed. CIGS has extraordinary solar efficiency -- a layer of chalcopyrite one or two microns thick has the ability to capture the energy from photons about as efficiently as a 50-micron-thick layer made with silicon.
In the new findings, researchers were able to create an ink that could print chalcopyrite onto substrates with an inkjet approach, with a power conversion efficiency of about 5 percent. The OSU researchers say that with continued research they should be able to achieve an efficiency of about 12 percent, which would make a commercially viable solar cell.
In related work, being done in collaboration with Greg Herman, an OSU associate professor of chemical engineering, the engineers are studying other compounds that might also be used with inkjet technology, and cost even less.
Some approaches to producing solar cells are time consuming, or require expensive vacuum systems or toxic chemicals. OSU experts are working to eliminate some of those roadblocks and create much less costly solar technology that is also more environmentally friendly. New jobs and industries in the Pacific Northwest could evolve from such initiatives, they say.
If costs can be reduced enough and other hurdles breached, it might even be possible to create solar cells that could be built directly into roofing materials, scientists say, opening a huge new potential for solar energy.
"In summary, a simple, fast, and direct-write, solution-based deposition process is developed for the fabrication of high quality CIGS solar cells," the researchers wrote in their conclusion. "Safe, cheap, and air-stable inks can be prepared easily by controlling the composition of low-cost metal salt precursors at a molecular level."
This work was supported by the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, the U.S. Department of Energy and OSU's University Venture Development Fund, which helps donors receive tax benefits while sponsoring projects that will bring new technology, jobs and economic growth to Oregon.
Economic Indicators Point Toward Growth in Renewable Energy
While scanning the horizon in sea of mostly grim economic news, I found three gems - - - news reports or economic indicators, if you will, that point to solid and profitable growth in the renewable energy sector of the economy in the near, 3-5 year term.
These indicators point toward a shift in the financing, production, consumption and distribution of alternative energy, predicated on advances in technology that will bring the productions costs down to a competitive plateau with conventional fossil fuels. I suspect the time it takes from "innovation in the laboratory" to diffuse into the commercial market place has to be reduced from years to months or less, in order for this to work. When investors like General Electric, Google, and MIT, direct research and investment on this scale - - - it just might tip the balance.
The cost benefit ratio of "coal fired" electricity vs "solar" will equalize or fall in favor of solar. In a recent report from Bloomberg news, Mr. Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric Co., predicts that solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels within 3-5 years. A combination of rising energy prices with lower production cost and higher efficiency will make solar cost competitive with conventional coal fired electric generation. General Electric (GE) plans to invest in "advanced" solar panel manufacturing and expects to open a plant in 2013, employing over 400 people and make enough solar panels to power 80,000 homes. If this business plan unfolds as predicted, watch for explosive growth on all fronts the Solar industry.
Major advance in battery technology will change the automotive playing field. The "energy density" ratio of stored battery power vs liquid fossil fuel will get closer giving the battery powered automobile the range you'd expect from a tank of gas - - - with much faster re - charging time. In a press release from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dated June 6, 2011, researchers announced they have devised a radical new approach to battery construction that provide an inexpensive, smaller, and lighter, alternative to existing battery technology. This is the "breakthrough" technology needed to make electric vehicles affordable and practical. To see the technical details and read full press release go to; http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/flow-batteries-0606.html
Google recently announced a $280 million partnership with California installer, Solar City, (www.solarcity.com) to set up a financing model that offers residents a roof top solar system for no money down. In exchange, customers agree to pay a set price for the power produced by the panels. This is largest solar initiative of its kind in US that will facilitate cost competitive utility scale power generation and distribution to thousands of homes.
To date, GOOGLE has invested over $680 million in renewable energy projects, with the goal of making the company a "net zero" user of electric power. This corporate philosophy is based on the bottom line premise that solar will cost the consumer less than conventional fossil or nuclear. We will all be watching this project to see how it plays out, both in KWh generated and return on investment. If this investment model works for GOOGLE, then maybe, other corporate investors will follow. See full press release; http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110614/ap_on_hi_te/us_google_solar
These indicators point toward a shift in the financing, production, consumption and distribution of alternative energy, predicated on advances in technology that will bring the productions costs down to a competitive plateau with conventional fossil fuels. I suspect the time it takes from "innovation in the laboratory" to diffuse into the commercial market place has to be reduced from years to months or less, in order for this to work. When investors like General Electric, Google, and MIT, direct research and investment on this scale - - - it just might tip the balance.
The cost benefit ratio of "coal fired" electricity vs "solar" will equalize or fall in favor of solar. In a recent report from Bloomberg news, Mr. Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric Co., predicts that solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels within 3-5 years. A combination of rising energy prices with lower production cost and higher efficiency will make solar cost competitive with conventional coal fired electric generation. General Electric (GE) plans to invest in "advanced" solar panel manufacturing and expects to open a plant in 2013, employing over 400 people and make enough solar panels to power 80,000 homes. If this business plan unfolds as predicted, watch for explosive growth on all fronts the Solar industry.
Major advance in battery technology will change the automotive playing field. The "energy density" ratio of stored battery power vs liquid fossil fuel will get closer giving the battery powered automobile the range you'd expect from a tank of gas - - - with much faster re - charging time. In a press release from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dated June 6, 2011, researchers announced they have devised a radical new approach to battery construction that provide an inexpensive, smaller, and lighter, alternative to existing battery technology. This is the "breakthrough" technology needed to make electric vehicles affordable and practical. To see the technical details and read full press release go to; http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/flow-batteries-0606.html
Google recently announced a $280 million partnership with California installer, Solar City, (www.solarcity.com) to set up a financing model that offers residents a roof top solar system for no money down. In exchange, customers agree to pay a set price for the power produced by the panels. This is largest solar initiative of its kind in US that will facilitate cost competitive utility scale power generation and distribution to thousands of homes.
To date, GOOGLE has invested over $680 million in renewable energy projects, with the goal of making the company a "net zero" user of electric power. This corporate philosophy is based on the bottom line premise that solar will cost the consumer less than conventional fossil or nuclear. We will all be watching this project to see how it plays out, both in KWh generated and return on investment. If this investment model works for GOOGLE, then maybe, other corporate investors will follow. See full press release; http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110614/ap_on_hi_te/us_google_solar
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