In this episode, Virginia covers the ACT’s solar feed in tariff to remain unchanged, Professor Ross Garnaut states renewable energy not the major culprit in electricity price rises, the radioactive nature of coal and IKEA’s solar power efforts.
Hard on the heels of Google’s recent multi-million dollar investment in a German solar farm, the company has announced it is sinking a massive USD$168 million into a solar power tower in the USA.
Last week the president of America’s Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA), Rhone Resch, used a speech at a solar energy conference to congratulate the sector on its tremendous growth in 2010 and to highlight the solar industry’s importance to the US bottom line.
Search engine giant Google has further boosted its green street-cred with a major investment in a solar farm in Brandenburg, Germany.
Australia’s popular Solar Credits rebate is already facing an early reduction, with possibly another to follow says a report in a major newspaper.
A program launched by Schott Solar makes solar energy available in German classrooms in the form of solar suitcases, experimental kits that allow school kids to carry out practical experiments with solar power.
While clean-energy technology has moved ahead in leaps and bounds, it’s still being overshadowed by continued demand for fossil fuels; partly due to subsidies says the International Energy Agency.
Lessons learned in the 1980s are being applied to the US solar manufacturing sector as part of a USD$112 million funding boost for the industry.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany are working on redox flow batteries – energy storage solutions that could hold the key to further the uptake of wind and solar power, with each battery able to provide electricity for up to 2,000 households.
Households installing solar power systems now are likely playing a bigger role in the Australian renewable energy revolution than they may realise.
