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Ray of light

Ray of light

01/12/2009 | Channel: Renewable Energy

Petri Konttinen argues that solar energy needs to be given a far greater prominence in the energy mix

Each year the earth receives around 100,000 tera watts of solar energy from the sun, some 6700 times more energy than the 15 tera watts that we consume each year. Yet, despite the vast amounts of solar energy that could be harvested to generate electricity and heat buildings, just a fraction of the world’s power currently comes from these energy sources.

Today, as we face the realities of climate change and trying to address the conflicting needs of cutting carbon emissions while also boosting energy generation to meet the power demands of a developing world, the continued relative low levels of investment in solar energy must rank as one of the world’s great wasted opportunities.

Governments, utility companies, oil companies and businesses are spending billions developing new energy strategies, and searching for fossil fuel deposits and developing coal and oil fired power generation facilities when the free, zero-carbon power of the sun is largely being ignored.

The Stern report into climate change, published last year, stated that unless we spent one per cent of global GDP over the next ten years tackling the impact of global warming, then we’d have to accept that we’d lose between five per cent – ten per cent of GDP every year due to the impact of climate change.

While many governments are now committing to carbon reduction targets, and the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference in December will provide a forum for setting more targets for cutting carbon emissions, there has yet to be a genuine combined effort or forum for all governments, energy companies and renewables companies to come together and seriously look at how to use the most powerful and low cost power source we have, the sun. It is critical that we ensure solar power is taken as seriously as other renewable energies and that we have a comprehensive renewables energy policy, which includes solar as a core element and a solution to the world’s need for low carbon energy generation.

The fact that there has been no global forum to examine solar energy is, I think, a missed opportunity and something that should be addressed as a matter of urgency to ensure we have a global energy strategy that enables us to ensure we are spending the one per cent annual GDP investment in our planets future in the best way.

As solar technology becomes more advanced and large scale use and increased production of solar energy brings down the unit cost of electricity-producing photovoltaic solar energy modules, heat-generating solar thermal collectors and concentrated solar power, which produces electricity by heat and turbine, the price of generating energy from this technology continues to drop. The point at which solar powered electricity and electricity generated from conventional fossil-fuel driven power plants reaches parity is not far away.

The first place price parity is likely to occur will be Italy which should see solar and fossil fuelled electricity prices reach equilibrium in around four years time, at which point photovoltaic solar electricity will cost around the same per kWh unit as electricity from the national grid. Granted the cost of grid electricity in Italy is relatively high and the country benefits from a high level of solar radiation making it ideally placed to lead solar energy into the mainstream in Europe but the rest of southern Europe won’t be far behind.

However to really benefit from solar power, a global consensus on how we harvest this energy is needed. Solar energy is most usefully utilised through a two-pronged approach, coupling industrial scale photovoltaic electrical power generation with microgeneration solutions, which generally will focus around capturing electricity and solar heat, or enabling solar cooling, via solar photovoltaic (PV) and thermal panels installed on individual buildings.

While countries can, and no doubt will, develop nationally focused solar power generation projects, and many are already successfully doing this, gaining cross border consensus on the creation of industrial scale solar energy would reap considerable benefits.

For example, it would be possible to build huge solar farms in Africa (in areas such as the Sahara) where the solar radiation could be collected and transported via the grids for use in lower light countries, notably in Europe. Equally the power could
be harvested and stored for future use and also provide a valuable source of jobs, power and revenue for these emerging African economies.

Recent announcements by both India and China that they are to invest heavily in solar power production is also a welcome step forward, and the reality is that these countries are well placed to capitalise on the demand and opportunities offered by solar power. It is also a wake up call to developed economies in the US and Europe that the green energy revolution and low carbon economic growth do not necessarily have to be led by the ‘old’ economic order. Emerging economies with strong education and a cultural respect for the skills of scientists and engineers are fully able to capitalise on their skills and low wage manufacturing bases to steal a march in the fight to utilise the power of the sun.

China is already by far the world’s largest manufacturer of solar thermal vacuum tube collectors, and a large manufacturer of photovoltaic panels, although at present the technology underpinning these developments is largely Japanese, European or US.

However some 30 per cent of the world’s photovoltaic modules are made in China and the country accounts for around 75 per cent of the global solar thermal market. It is amassing a formidable skills base in the manufacture of solar harvesting systems.

Despite this manufacturing dominance, currently only about two per cent of Chinese made photovoltaic panels are utilised for electricity production in China, although solar thermal is far more widely used, with heat tubes locally produced in any of the 3000 factories for domestic water heating. Yet at the same time China is investing heavily in coal fired power stations. Surely a global forum on harnessing solar power would be able to find a consensus that addressed this anomaly and enabled solar photovoltaic technology to be utilised more widely in this country?

In Europe, Germany is leading the way as one of world’s leading users of solar photovoltaic energy despite the fact that it has far lower levels of sun light and solar radiation than southern Europe, let alone China, Africa or India.

However as photovoltaic technology improves, and thermal storage capabilities for solar thermal and solar cooling advance, European countries are increasingly looking to solar energy as one element of renewable power generation strategies. But, while the capabilities may be there, without clear government targets for solar power generation the risk is that other more technologically advanced power generation capabilities, such as nuclear, could become seen as a default option.

Despite Europe’s technological expertise in solar thermal and photovoltaic power generation, many utility companies have yet to adopt this form of energy generation on a large scale. Yet, apart from anything else, solar power generation has the potential to create a huge amount of green collar jobs, in the development and manufacturing of the solar power generation systems as well as in the utility companies themselves.

In the EU alone, some 70,000 jobs have currently been created by the photovoltaic industry, with a further 40,000 jobs created within solar thermal energy production and this is from an industry that is at a highly nascent stage in its development.
Were the world’s governments and industry leaders to set targets for solar power generation and really move it up the agenda, the green collar economy that resulted would create millions of roles.

But at present too much attention and funding remains focused on fossil fuels and nuclear. EU funding directed towards R&D in the fossil fuel market is far larger than is directed towards renewables. It seems crazy to invest such a disproportionately large amount of money in a dwindling fuel source, which directly contributes to global warming.

But things are beginning to change. At the moment many traditional energy companies are buying renewable energy generators when they reach a certain size and just incorporating these green power generation capabilities into their existing networks and stating they have a commitment to low carbon energy. But in reality this risks being little more than a green-wash acquiring minimal capacity and a green banner, when far greater resources could be directed into developing solar energy and other renewables on a far wider scale.

Consumer demand for renewable energy is growing and there are a number of smaller, innovative renewable energy supply and solar and wind power companies that are becoming more established. As consumer demand continues to shift behind them, they will continue to grow and it is entirely possible that in future we will see these smaller energy companies growing to a size where they rival the big established energy companies.

There are also some signs of change among a few more enlightened, established power organisations. ABB, E.on and Deutsche Bank have signed a memorandum of understanding to provide technology and knowledge for developing carbon-free solar power generation for use in Africa and as time progresses this type of commitment and investment could grow, with the right government and public backing.

The issue is that solar power generation, and indeed all renewable power generation, is not developing fast enough to meet the Stern Report’s one per cent GDP target. Certainly as far as solar power is concerned the worry is that, without an international forum to set targets and drive solar up the agenda, then it will continue to slowly increase in importance without a coherent strategy to enable us to harness this incredible free energy resource.

The great irony about global warming is that the earth would never exist without the life-giving warmth and power of the sun, yet within it lies the seeds of our own destruction – unless we ensure that carbon levels drop that life-giving power will turn against us and massively impair life on the planet. Yet solar energy gives us one of the great untapped solutions to the problem.

As we approach Cop15 surely now the time has come to boost investment and global commitments to solar energy for all our sakes.

Petri Konttinen is a solar energy senior consultant at Luvata. Luvata is the leading international metals supplier of solutions, services, components and materials for manufacturing and construction. Luvata’s solutions are used in industries such as renewable energy, power generation, architecture, automotive, transport, medicine, air-conditioning, industrial refrigeration, consumer products and construction.

For further information, visit: www.luvata.com.