I received an email a couple of days ago from one of Australia’s most respected young solar energy scientists, Nicole Keuper, with some devastating news: the world renowned Australian Research Council Photovoltaics Centre of Excellence, based at the University of New South Wales, has had its funding slashed by the Australian Research Council. It will lose $25 million over the next 7 years.
Many people have heard the story of Dr Zengrong Shi, who set up Suntech Power – the world’s second largest PV company – after studying at the UNSW research centre. Like Dr Shi, many of the centre’s past students have gone on to become world leaders in solar PV.
The centre’s current students – it takes 60 postgraduate students at a time – are Australia’s best and brightest young scientists and engineers. Many of them want to study and work in Australia – after all, we’re one of the sunniest countries in the world, and are beginning to make a huge contribution to developing solar PV technology, largely due to the UNSW Research Centre.
This decision makes it much more likely that these students will move overseas, taking with them the potential for the creation of new industries, companies and new jobs in Australia.
Whilst the Centre will not be closing its doors tomorrow, its ground breaking 2nd and 3rd generation research will be difficult to fund going forward.
Surely this is a decision that, if enough attention is drawn to it, could be easily reversed in the next two and a half weeks of election campaigning?
All political parties have said that they support kick-starting domestic renewable energy industries – it creates jobs and opportunities for young Australians, and will be the basis of the 21st century economy.
John Doerr, the early venture capitalist behind Netscape Communications, Amazon.com, Google, and other pioneering tech firms that went from scrappy start-ups to household names, is placing big bets on the emerging renewable energy and green technology sector. He believes it will become as lucrative as information technology and biotechnology and that ‘green’ is the biggest trend in the economies of the future.
“This field of greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century,” says Doerr.
Why doesn’t the Australian research Council agree?
For more information, Muriel Watt has written a good article over at Climate Spectator.
18 Comments
This is a big shame and will certainly be a terrible waste of yet more talented Aussie brains.
The one thing I’d say though is that it is not true that “this is a decision that, if enough attention is drawn to it, could be easily reversed in the next two and a half weeks of election campaigning”. The whole point of the ARC is that it follows a rigid process divorced of direct political involvement, the Minister does have the power of veto over every grant, but that’s the only politcal mechanism in there. The political influence comes only at the start, in setting the overall priorities for Australian research (which is why you get crazy stuff in grants applications such as explaining the National Security benefits of extra-galactic astronomy…). There isn’t any process, as far as I’m aware, by which the ARC can ‘reverse’ a decision like this, since the money will have been allocated elsewhere and can’t be taken back.
I’m sure if the ARC process leading to this decision was examined carefully the justification for the decision would be sound, based on the breif they are set. It would be misplaced to blame the ARC for this decision.
All that this means is that anyone who wants to try and get this reversed shouldn’t waster their time and energy on the ARC because it is not within their power or scope to do what needs to be done. What could (and should but probably won’t) be done is for specific funds be made available outside of the regular ARC process for (in the first instance) this research centre, and more broadly for renewables research.
Politicians love the big announcement, but what is really needed for renewables research is a large pot of money made specficially available with certainty into the future that encrourages centres like these to grow even further and new ones to emerge in other parts of the renewable energy field. There are some schemes which fund this kind of research but they are too ad hoc and too often simply existing money re-packaged and re-branded for the latest photo opportunity, and crucially do not provide certainty for funding into the future.
If we are serious about this research (which we should be) we need to release the top minds from the usual treadmill of spending a solid proportion of their time obtaining annual peice meal grants.
But aim the anger and energy at the politicians, not the ARC, for the best chance of success.
This sort of stupidity gets me so angry. Almost every politician seems to be equally culpable. Why, oh why, are we wasting billions of dollars on so-called “clean coal” research when genuine research, like this, which might actually make a difference, gets gutted? Why are there so few politicians with anything more than a primary school understanding of science?
The fossil fuel lobby are really running the agenda here. They’re the ones getting the lion’s share of funding for their ridiculous CCS projects and the pollies of both houses are in their collective pockets. Australia is cursed with a political class lacking in credibility when it comes to tackling climate change. They just don’t get it do they.
We should keep hammering the theme of our borrowing the planet from our grandchildren.
With the sunny climate we have here it beggars belief we have politicians on both sides ignoring the potential of leading in solar research. Nothing new under the sun.
Very sad to see this decision. Partly for UNSW but particularly for Australia. This place is one of the few world technology leaders that we have. It’s been a world leader in the field for 30 odd years.
Political and business leaders from around the world come and see this place. They want to know about it. Why we would choose now to stop funding is hard to fathom. Perhaps an enterprising journalist might want to follow this up. The arcane world of ARC funding could possibly use the light.
And that’s Nicole Kuepper by the way. Good luck with it Anna and Muriel. Hope you keep on this story.
Presumably they didn’t meet certain “performance milestones” or whatever managerialist BS ARC and their reviewers are forced to use. Meanwhile Australia subsidized coal, the increasingly absurd CCS (and direct subsidies to coal-fired plants to be “CCS-ready, hah!) and other ff with reportedly $8B per year.
But maybe a lot of noise in this fraught election might just rustle up some dosh to be reallocated from the unspent monies from the Solar Flagships program etc (though the reason it is unspent is at least partly also because of cumbersome unrealistic application criteria). As usual the best will head overseas like Shi Zhengrong. And no accident that Areva (state owned French nuclear power company) purchased Ausra, the once-Australian solar-thermal company. Back to the quarries.
Unbefriggin’leavable…
I understand that the ARC may have good reasons within its own charter to reduce the funding, but the problem is at the macro level. If funding for a crock like CCS is considered sufficiently important by a government as a national priority to be outside the ARC, surely the same should apply for solar research.
Re. Australian solar ideas going overseas, remember also evacuated tube solar hot water systems. Developed at Sydney Uni c. 30 years ago, technology picked up by China.
Nah, there’s no jobs in clean energy…
Extremely disappointing, but neither surprising nor unique.
There is not enough money available for research after years of de-funding universities, with academics and researchers squabbling over an ever-decreasing fund pool, and there is even less money available to turn research output into products. There is no coherent government strategy to ensure our good ideas are developed into a local export industry. I guess we are lucky that we can dig things out of the ground to sell, because we certainly aren’t the clever country when it comes to leveraging our “smarts” into export earnings.
The decline in funding for research, and the lack of government incentive to commercialize new technology, is ‘supported’ by both Labor and the coalition.
And as the MSM concentrate on the differences between the major parties, this is all to them a non-issue.
The ABC has had its policies rewritten by the Howard board appointees, and now includes ‘prominence’ as a criteria for news value. So something trivial happening to Gillard is newsworthy because she is prominent, and Abbott gets the reply because he has equal prominence.
Have you noticed how the ABC no longer (or very rarely) has input from anyone to the progressive side of Labor? For example, the welfare lobby used to have a good say, and now they don’t get a say. Similarly the research and new technology investment people no longer get a say. This is because neither the welfare lobby nor the research lobby have someone as ‘prominent’ as Abbott and Gillard to put their case.
Both Labor and the coalition are promising tax cuts. Tax cuts mean less spending, including less spending on research. But how often have you heard anyone putting the case against tax cuts and for more spending on welfare, research, etc?
And how often have you heard some representative from the business world say that tax cuts are good, and there should be more of them.
Whilst many Crikey bloggers get upset about perceived bias in the media against the party they support, the real media bias is that views to the progressive side of Labor are rarely covered.
Hence business gets its tax cuts, and the decline in research spending is a non-issue.
It is all very sad.
As an interesting aside to this. About 150 metres away from the Photovoltaics Research Centre of Excellence on UNSW campus, a Solar Industrial Research Facility is being built, in partnership with a commercial company (the name escapes me) so that state of the art photovoltaic cells can be produced on campus in tandem with the ongoing research of the Centre of Excellence.
It may just be that some time next year UNSW will be opening a state of the art PV production facility while closing the Research Centre.
I will be writing to politicians to at least make sure they are aware of it (they may well not be) and I urge others here to do the same.
Just spoke to an advisor from Senator Carr’s office. I was told that the funding was to be continued (and increased) from the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism in conjunction with the Solar Energy Institute.
The Centre lost funding due to the competitive nature of the ARC model. It appears that info about replacement funding was not included in the Greens press release which brought the matter to public attention. Could it be there is an election going on?
It is very difficult to cross reference sets of numbers, this is what gives politicians so much wriggle room. I have found this info on the Australian Solar Institute website, http://www.australiansolarinstitute.com.au/fundingfactsheet-11MAY10.pdf. The ASI funding address is http://www.australiansolarinstitute.com.au/funding.htm.
I am not as outraged as I was an hour ago but unclear about the full picture. Funny how science based research which can produce positive change for all has to face all these hurdles, yet middle class welfare just powers along.
Ed – I haven’t seen the Greens press release, I just heard about it from the students. Funding being increased? They didn’t know about that – I’ll look into it further and report back.
Andrew – that’s really interesting about the production site. And good on your for writing to politicians about this.
Anna – good on you for raising this.
Ed – I hope you’re right. No announcement has hit yet as far as I know.
Will keep you posted.
That funds can be wasted on ccs and not directed to solar research is all the evidence necessary to prove that decision makers in this field are owned by the fossil fuel industry.
Such stupidity makes me sad and angry.
Today there is evidence of widespread crop failures in Russia, China, Canada, India, Pakistan and North Korea.
Food will soon become scarce and expensive and we still have a 1000 years worth of warming built in. If I had have had this information 20 years ago I would never of had children. The world we leave for them will indeed be a hell on earth and they will pay for the sins of their filthy, greedy, rich, stupid, overloads.
filthy, greedy, rich, stupid, corrupt overlords.
I’m going to run against the flow a bit here. But in general I agree with you all.
I don’t really like the tone of the article for a start. A CRC not having it’s funding renewed is not the same as having its funding slashed. Also, the fact that the solar industry in general is likely to continue growing does not mean this particular CRC was worth continuing; but it may well have been.
I actually don’t like hand outs for renewables in general. For a couple of reasons. First, it allows Government to tell everyone how much they are doing, with a fancy $ amount attached to it. Like Solar Flagships, the $1.6b program announced by Rudd. This sounds like a lot of money and like a lot of generation, but it’s tokenistic and will not drive change in the energy mix. Linked to this is the backyard/cottage industry feel that Government support adds to an industry. The public have a poor perception of a lot of renewables and the sooner they can stand alone, the better.
The way to achieve this, in my opinion, is a price on carbon; I don’t care how it’s calculated. Governments will NEVER invest enough in research. The best way to encourage research and generate certainty for researchers is a price on carbon. At the moment, half the industry has to read the newspaper every day to find out what the laws are for them.
There are those who would argue that there is a role for Government in assisting early stage research to bridge the gap between the idea and the first commercial demonstration. For more detail on this view, check out the Wilkin’s review, chapter 6
http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/strategic-reviews/docs/Chapter-Six.pdf
Summarising, I think sometimes the Government is happy to distract us with money coming and going from here and there. This is tinkering on the fringes and will not deliver the lasting change that energy generation and the solar industry requires. We need a price on carbon, it’s that simple. Rather than worrying about $25m here and there, I’m going to concentrate on advocating for structural change.
One last thing, an article from the SMH summarising Wilkins’ findings from the report.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/ineffective-solar-rebates-should-go-report-20090513-b3ei.html
If renewable energy cannot run a country like Australia entirely then it can never happen. We should be leading the way on a transition from coal etc to wind, solar and geothermal. We have the brains and the money to to do it. We lack the leadership assigned to politicians to achieve it, as evidenced by the refuals t put a price just on the carbon we consume in this country, leaving other aspects to be determined within the global context.