AUSTRALIAN SOLAR INSTITUTE (ASI) TO TURBOCHARGE SOLAR ENERGY DEVELOPMENT THROUGH ITS FIRST ROUND GRANTS
The Australian Solar Institute (ASI) announced today it would support a number of innovative solar research and development (R&D) projects to accelerate development of solar energy and to reinforce Australia’s leading solar research capabilities.
The projects include a 30% more efficient lower cost photovoltaic cell, thermionic devices that could generate electricity direct from heat and nanotechnology to capture light. Research is also being done on organic photovoltaic solar cells that can be incorporated into building materials and solar thermal units to power steam turbines.
Around $11 million will be made available (subject to satisfactory negotiation of the terms and conditions of funding) to help fund five (5) R&D projects valued at around $31 million which are under development at several universities around the country and at the CSIRO.
The Chair of the ASI, Jenny Goddard said, “The ASI is delighted to provide funding support to these 5 excellent projects. They offer significant potential to reduce the cost of solar energy by accelerating the development of photovoltaic cells and concentrating solar thermal technologies.”
She said, “These projects will help ensure Australia’s world class solar researchers remain at the forefront of developments in this field. ”
The ASI Board has authorised further discussions in respect of several other promising projects arising from the first round of applications. Further announcements will be made pending the outcome of commercial-in-confidence discussions with the relevant applicants and their collaborative partners.
ASI Executive Director, Mark Twidell said “the ASI was very impressed by the high standard of the 87 funding applications received by the October 2009 deadline. It was a highly competitive funding round which reflects the strength and breadth of solar R&D activity in Australia”.
“Our 3 foundation projects announced in January 2009 aimed to develop key infrastructure for research into solar concentrating and photovoltaic technologies. The projects announced today build on these technologies and also include research in the area of organic solar, where the potential to generate electricity from simple low cost chemical processes has long term potential.”
Mr Twidell said “a further R&D funding round is expected to be announced in the first half of 2010. The ASI will work proactively with potential R&D project proponents to encourage excellence, collaboration and to maximise commercial investment and development.”
The ASI welcomes investment in its funding program from organisations interested in promoting increased use of solar energy.
The Australian Solar Institute is supported by the Australian Government through the $4.5 billion Clean Energy Initiative (CEI). The Clean Energy Initiative includes the $1.5 billion Solar Flagships Program, the $2.4 billion Carbon Capture and Storage Flagships Program, the $560 million Australian Centre for Renewable Energy and the $100 million Australian Solar Institute.
Further information on the successful projects is attached.
ASI contact: Mark Twidell, Executive Director, ASI.
Telephone 0410 566 065 02 4960 6306
Project Summaries.
University of New South Wales: Development and Commercialisation of High Efficiency Silicon Solar Cell Technology. $3.972m funding to support a $12.75m core funded research project.
University of Newcastle: Fabrication of Thermionic Devices Using Directional Solidification / Sintering Processes for High Temperature Concentrating Solar Thermal Applications. $515,000 funding to support a $700,000 basic research project.
CSIRO and the Australian National University: Advanced steam generating receivers for high concentration solar collectors. $4.084m funding to support a $9.7m core funded research project.
Australian National University: Plasmonics for high efficiency Photovoltaic Solar Cells using nanotechnology to capture more light. $1.67m funding to support a $5.84m applied research funded project.
University of Queensland: New Materials and Architectures for Organic Solar Cells - Beyond the Shockley-Queisser Limit. $945,000 funding to support a $1.945m basic research funded project.
At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world's energy future, describing the need for "miracles" to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he's backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.
Jamie Oliver engaged in the the process of sustainability
Quote, "I wish for everyone to help create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity."
Jamie Oliver
This is our future.
Could we adopt this across the whole planet. This is true sustainability
Willie Smits long ago abandoned the customary role of the microbiologist. After working in the Indonesian rainforest for three decades (and marrying a tribal queen), he has taken it upon himself to regrow the delicate ecosystems ravaged by ruthless forestry, and invent a hi-tech system for harvesting sustainable ethanol from sugar palms (without even cutting down the plant, or "harvesting its organs," as he puts it).
Indonesia is now the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses and the largest producer of palm oil, a dubious substance that ends up as ethanol and cheap food additives. Smits' alternative not only produces sustainable ethanol, but dries food, pumps out clean energy and water, and offers satellite telecommunications to local farmers.
This an email sent to me from Kjell Dahlström after I made enquiries about the pod car that is been developed in Sewden. Kjell is the driving force behind the pod car.
A full story will be published in the About Poeple newsletter out mid February 2010
Dear Ian,
I hope you have found www.podcar.org. It is the homepage of Institute for Sustainable Transportation IST and "Kompass", municipalities which want to develop podcar systems within their realm.
These organisations have developed in Sweden but have made the leap to USA and the international scene. The international conferences have been arranged for 3 years in a row now and the whole business is very promising with the orders frpm Masdar in Abu Dahbi, Heathrow in London and Suncheon on the southern tip of Korea. In Sweden the government is preparing for a pioneering project track in one of our 100.000 inh. towns outside Stockholm or Uppsala.
Close to your e-mail I got a new contact from Moscow, Sergey Prokhorenko, with a PhD from Australia in Economics and on-going work there. He has developed "Sky-Taxi" which is estimated by Jerry Schneider in Seattle, USA, being a very promising concept.
So you see, this is now a global network of interest and concern, not to mention Nice, France, Sao Paolo, Brazil, and New Delhi, India, projects!
Resistance shown comes mainly from vested interests in other modes of transportation. I could write100 pages on these types of reactions but it isn´t worth the time to do it.
Costs for podcar systems are initially calculated to 10 million USD per kilometer as an international average, including cars, stops, parking and maintenance facilities. I launched the concept of a General Transport System, GTS, in my state agency SIKA 2006. In 2008
we made a full study on business and social economies of such a system and it prooves to be profitable. Other research institutions, in UK, the Netherlands and USA have found the same results.
Many of my colleages present PRT or podcars as public transport. In GTS we consider podcars to be a cross-over between ordinary cars and public transit in all its forms. This creates a much more dynamic
approach to the need of new concepts for the future of transportation. See our film Bubbles and Beams on my page or on You Tube. Reflect on the details of what you see and you can grasp the potential!
Best Regards
Kjell
Sustainability Awards
I was a judge on the Pittwater sustainability awards this year and it was Pittwater Councils first foray into this type of awards. They will have their next awards in 2011.
Sustainability is on the lips of millions of people across the planet with the Copenhagen Climate Conference held December. Irrelevant to the outcomes of this conference or what the federal government final proposals are we can not afford to wait any longer. The action needs to happen now.
I am proposing a sustainability awards across the whole of Sydney and I am now looking into what interest there is by
councils across Sydney having a city sustainability awards. This would involve individual councils running their own awards then having city awards following on from the individual council wards. This could follow into a state then a national wards, maybe.
The whole idea behind this is to engage local communities at the individual level in sustainability in Landscaping, Building/built environment and Business. This would also speed up the process of integrating sustainability into the whole of society. This is an idea and like all ideas it will
require a lot of effort and money to get it of the ground.
Sustainability
Sustainability is a vision of achieving simultaneous human and ecosystem well-being, with a goal of ‘parallel care and respect for the ecosystem and the people within’. Sustainability is made up of three strands – social, economic, and ecological (or environmental).
You can think of sustainability as being a three-legged stool, with each strand making up a leg.
Social Sustainability Western society has previously viewed the world as a pool of resources for its unconstrained use. This is unsustainable. Part of the problem is our human-centred world view, rather than an eco-centric world view which focuses on the ecosystems that sustain us.
TSF consultations and other research have shown that people are also withdrawing from being part of the community, and that connections within and across the community are increasingly fragile. Yet to solve the environmental crisis and reach sustainability, we will need social cohesion to work together.
Within our overall sustainability framework, TSF sees social sustainability as being about working for equity and social justice locally and globally, thus reaching a society which can live in balance with the world and its ecosystems - a world at peace, both between people and between people and nature.
Economic sustainability This is not just continuing business as usual. Economic sustainability is creating an economy that is sustainable over the long-term, not just a short-term growth economy. This means not damaging the ecosystem services that underpin our society.
Environmental economics has now become the cutting edge of economics, and in many ways is integrating ecology and economics through environmental accounting. This takes into account the essential importance of the ecosystem services that maintain the planet’s health. The Stern Report in the UK is an example of environmental economics examining climate change, which showed that the economic costs of not acting were far greater than the costs of taking action now.
Ecological sustainability This is taking action to control the Earth’s environmental crises to support the ecosystems (and ecosystem services) that support us. In practical terms it means sustainably conserving and restoring our native vegetation, rather than clearing it. It means not degrading our soils. It means not polluting our rivers and air. It means not over-using our water resources. It means monitoring all these so we know what is happening. It means not using non-renewable resources if we can switch to renewable ones. It means only using renewable resources in a sustainable manner. It means reducing the amount of waste, reusing as much remaining waste as possible, and recycling the rest. It means increasing our understanding of environmental science and using it to guide our actions. And in terms of urgent challenges, it means substantially reducing our carbon footprint by controlling our greenhouse gas emissions..
Toward Sustainable Futures
Lets keep it simple, to start with if you were to watch the video below by David Mc Kay on energy consumption and what renewable's would be required to replace the energy usage of the average consumer in Britain it would give you and idea of what we need to do in Australia or any other developed country. It runs for 57 minutes. The other option is to download and watch at your leisure. Click here to download David Mac Kay - Without hot air
A view on a sustainable future
Success story of Gadhia Solar Energy Systems Pty Ltd.
Solar cooker designed for temperatures up to 250 degrees centigrade at its focus
