Renewable Energy

Another giant leap

Nobel Peace Prize winner and former vice-president Al Gore has challenged the US to stop depending on fossil fuels. This is an edited transcript of his speech

Al Gore

Updated on Jul 20, 2008 – SCMP

There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more – if more should be required – the future of human civilisation is at stake.

I don’t remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.

The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse – much more quickly than predicted. Scientists with access to data from navy submarines traversing underneath the north polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 per cent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months. This will further increase the melting pressure on Greenland. According to experts, the Jakobshavn glacier, one of Greenland’s largest, is moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons (18.14 million tonnes) of ice every day, equivalent to the amount of water used every year by the residents of New York City.

Two major studies from military intelligence experts have warned our leaders about the dangerous national security implications of the climate crisis, including the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees destabilising nations around the world.

Just two days ago, 27 senior statesmen and retired military leaders warned of the national security threat from an “energy tsunami” that would be triggered by a loss of our access to foreign oil. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues, and now the war in Afghanistan appears to be getting worse.

And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn’t it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours and record floods. Unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American West. Higher temperatures lead to drier vegetation that makes kindling for mega-fires of the kind that have been raging in Canada, Greece, Russia, China, South America, Australia and Africa. Scientists in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University tell us that for every one degree increase in temperature, lightning strikes will go up another 10 per cent. And it is lightning, after all, that is principally responsible for igniting the conflagration in California today.

Like a lot of people, it seems to me that all these problems are bigger than any of the solutions that have thus far been proposed for them, and that’s been worrying me.

I’m convinced that one reason we’ve seemed paralysed in the face of these crises is our tendency to offer old solutions to each crisis separately- without taking the others into account. And these outdated proposals have not only been ineffective – they almost always make the other crises even worse.

Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges – the economic, environmental and national security crises.

We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change.

But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we’re holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.

What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don’t cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home?

We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 per cent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity the US uses.

And enough wind power blows through the midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 per cent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America.

The quickest, cheapest and best way to start using all this renewable energy is in the production of electricity. In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses.

But to make this exciting potential a reality, and truly solve our nation’s problems, we need a new start.

That’s why I’m proposing today a strategic initiative designed to free us from the crises that are holding us down and to regain control of our own destiny. It’s not the only thing we need to do. But this strategic challenge is the lynchpin of a bold new strategy needed to re-power America.

Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 per cent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans – in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.

A few years ago, it would not have been possible to issue such a challenge. But here’s what’s changed: the sharp cost reductions now beginning to take place in solar, wind, and geothermal power – coupled with the recent dramatic price increases for oil and coal – have radically changed the economics of energy.

When I first went to Congress 32 years ago, I listened to experts testify that if oil ever got to US$35 a barrel, then renewable sources of energy would become competitive. Well, today, the price of oil is over US$135 per barrel. And sure enough, billions of dollars of new investment are flowing into the development of concentrated solar thermal, photovoltaics, windmills, geothermal plants, and a variety of ingenious new ways to improve our efficiency and conserve presently wasted energy.

And as the demand for renewable energy grows, the costs will continue to fall. Let me give you one revealing example: the price of the specialised silicon used to make solar cells was recently as high as US$300 per kilogram. But the newest contracts have prices as low as US$50 a kilogram.

You know, the same thing happened with computer chips – also made out of silicon. The price paid for the same performance came down by 50 per cent every 18 months – year after year, and that’s what’s happened for 40 years in a row.

To those who argue that we do not yet have the technology to accomplish these results with renewable energy: I ask them to come with me to meet the entrepreneurs who will drive this revolution. I’ve seen what they are doing and I have no doubt that we can meet this challenge.

To those who say the costs are still too high: I ask them to consider whether the costs of oil and coal will ever stop increasing if we keep relying on quickly depleting energy sources to feed a rapidly growing demand all around the world. When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cells increases, the price often comes down.

When we send money to foreign countries to buy nearly 70 per cent of the oil we use every day, they build new skyscrapers and we lose jobs. When we spend that money building solar arrays and windmills, we build competitive industries and gain jobs here at home.

Of course there are those who will tell us this can’t be done. Some of the voices we hear are the defenders of the status quo – the ones with a vested interest in perpetuating the current system, no matter how high a price the rest of us will have to pay. But even those who reap the profits of the carbon age have to recognise the inevitability of its demise. As one Opec oil minister observed: “The Stone Age didn’t end because of a shortage of stones.”

To those who say 10 years is not enough time, I respectfully ask them to consider what the world’s scientists are telling us about the risks we face if we don’t act in 10 years. The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis. When the use of oil and coal goes up, pollution goes up. When the use of solar, wind and geothermal increases, pollution comes down.

To those who say the challenge is not politically viable: I suggest they go before the American people and try to defend the status quo. Then bear witness to the people’s appetite for change.

I for one do not believe our country can withstand 10 more years of the status quo. Our families cannot stand 10 more years of gas price increases. Our workers cannot stand 10 more years of job losses and outsourcing of factories. Our economy cannot stand 10 more years of sending US$2 billion every 24 hours to foreign countries for oil. And our soldiers and their families cannot take another 10 years of repeated troop deployments to dangerous regions that just happen to have large oil supplies.

What could we do instead for the next 10 years? What should we do during the next 10 years? Some of our greatest accomplishments as a nation have resulted from commitments to reach a goal that fell well beyond the next election: the Marshall Plan, Social Security, the interstate highway system. But a political promise to do something 40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows that it’s meaningless. Ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target.

When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But eight years and two months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon.

To be sure, reaching the goal of 100 per cent renewable and truly clean electricity within 10 years will require us to overcome many obstacles. At present, for example, we do not have a unified national grid that is sufficiently advanced to link the areas where the sun shines and the wind blows to the cities in the East and the West that need the electricity. Our grids are antiquated, fragile, and vulnerable to cascading failure. Power outages and defects in the current grid system cost US businesses more than US$120 billion a year. It has to be upgraded anyway.

We could further increase the value and efficiency of a Unified National Grid by helping our struggling auto giants switch to the manufacture of plug-in electric cars. An electric vehicle fleet would sharply reduce the cost of driving a car, reduce pollution, and increase the flexibility of our electricity grid.

At the same time, of course, we need to greatly improve our commitment to efficiency and conservation. That’s the best investment we can make.

In order to foster international co-operation, it is also essential that the United States rejoin the global community and lead efforts to secure an international treaty at Copenhagen in December of next year that includes a cap on carbon dioxide emissions and a global partnership that recognises the necessity of addressing the threats of extreme poverty and disease as part of the world’s agenda for solving the climate crisis.

Of course the greatest obstacle to meeting the challenge of 100 per cent renewable electricity in 10 years may be the deep dysfunction of our politics and our self-governing system as it exists today. In recent years, our politics has tended towards incremental proposals made up of small policies designed to avoid offending special interests, alternating with occasional baby steps in the right direction. Our democracy has become sclerotic at a time when these crises require boldness.

It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil 10 years from now.

Am I the only one who finds it strange that our government so often adopts a so-called solution that has absolutely nothing to do with the problem it is supposed to address? When people rightly complain about higher gasoline prices, we propose to give more money to the oil companies and pretend that they’re going to bring gasoline prices down.

It will do nothing of the sort, and everyone knows it. If we keep going back to the same policies that have never ever worked in the past and have served only to produce the highest gasoline prices in history alongside the greatest oil company profits in history, nobody should be surprised if we get the same result over and over again. But the Congress may be poised to move in that direction anyway because some of them are being stampeded by lobbyists for special interests that know how to make the system work for them instead of the American people.

If you want to know the truth about gasoline prices, here it is: the exploding demand for oil, especially in places like China, is overwhelming the rate of new discoveries by so much that oil prices are almost certain to continue upward over time no matter what the oil companies promise. And politicians cannot bring gasoline prices down in the short term.

However, there actually is one extremely effective way to bring the costs of driving a car way down within a few short years. The way to bring gas prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of US$1 per gallon gasoline.

Many Americans have begun to wonder whether or not we’ve simply lost our appetite for bold policy solutions. And folks who claim to know how our system works these days have told us we might as well forget about our political system doing anything bold, especially if it is contrary to the wishes of special interests. And I’ve got to admit, that sure seems to be the way things have been going. But I’ve begun to hear different voices in this country from people who are not only tired of baby steps and special interest politics, but are hungry for a new, different and bold approach.

We are on the eve of a presidential election. We are in the midst of an international climate treaty process that will conclude its work before the end of the first year of the new president’s term. It is a great error to say that the United States must wait for others to join us in this matter. In fact, we must move first, because that is the key to getting others to follow; and because moving first is in our own national interest.

So I ask you to join with me to call on every candidate, at every level, to accept this challenge – for America to be running on 100 per cent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years. It’s time for us to move beyond empty rhetoric. We need to act now.

This is a generational moment. A moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I’m asking you – each of you – to join me and build this future. Please join the WE campaign at wecansolveit.org. We need you. And we need you now. We’re committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws. And laws will only change with leadership.

On July 16, 1969, the United States of America was finally ready to meet President Kennedy’s challenge of landing Americans on the moon. I watched along with hundreds of millions of others around the world as Neil Armstrong took one small step to the surface of the moon and changed the history of the human race.

We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilisation depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind.

One man’s dream of clean energy from mirrors in the desert comes close to reality

Billy Adams – SCMP – Updated on Jul 06, 2008

Given that he has developed a way to effectively save the world, it is probably best not to imagine the years of frustration David Mills experienced trying to enlist support. The respected scientist viewed a small contraption he built in a suburban Sydney car park as a first but important step towards solving the planet’s energy and climate crisis.

As investors baulked at the dollars required to get the technology up and running, only donations from relatives kept his company afloat.

The Australian government soon pitched in A$3 million (HK$22.4 million) but it was merely a stay of execution and as the funds drained, more than a decade of hard toil looked certain to go unrewarded.

At about the same time in 2006, Californian entrepreneur John O’Donnell was flicking through an obscure journal and stumbled on an article by Dr Mills.

It described how landscapes covered in mirrors could soak up the sun’s rays and provide vast amounts of energy. Enough – in theory – to satisfy most of the world’s power and transport demands, eliminating the need for coal, gas, oil and nuclear energy.

If that sounds like the stuff of fantasy, Mr O’Donnell was hooked and flew to Australia. His timing was perfect.

“We had spent most of the government money and we were highly concerned,” recalls Dr Mills. “It was getting close.”

The turnaround in his fortunes has been dramatic and swift. Within a few months of meeting Mr O’Donnell, the University of Sydney boffin and his Australian business partner Peter Le Lievre upped sticks and moved to Silicon Valley.

They were persuaded by US$43 million in funding from venture capitalists Ray Lane and Vinod Khosla, businessmen with formidable track records. Mr Lane is part of a company that invested early in Amazon and Google, while Mr Khosla co-founded Sun Microsystems.

“In Silicon Valley they think on a global basis,” said Dr Mills. It’s a place where the belief that “solar thermal” has the potential to change the world no longer appears to be a pipe dream.

The principle is simple enough. Unlike household solar panels, which have semiconductors to convert rays directly into electricity, sunlight is deflected off an array of large mirrors to heat tubes filled with water. That generates steam to drive a conventional turbine.

While the technology is proven and has operated for some time on a small scale, Dr Mills’ backers believe he has overcome the biggest hurdles preventing thermal’s entry into the mainstream energy mix.

Only working when the sun shines has been solar’s perennial Achilles’ heel, but Dr Mills has come up with a way of storing heat for up to 20 hours – ensuring, he says, reliable power day and night.

Within a few years, he believes, prices for thermal-powered electricity could rival today’s discount provider and major polluter – coal. Racing to drastically cut carbon emissions in the face of global warming, Dr Mills is at the forefront of the many operators seeking solutions through variations on the same solar theme.

Earlier this year the American business magazine Fast Company ranked his firm Ausra as the 20th most innovative in the world.

Dr Mills says these are “exciting times”. He compares today’s renewable energy landscape to the battle a century ago between electricity, gas and the combustion engine to propel the newly invented car.

“We are seeing an explosion in interest throughout the world,” he says from his office in Palo Alto. Governments from Chile to Africa have been on the phone wanting to know more.

“Solar companies are being set up every few weeks, especially in our field. It has turned around completely, to the point where some parts of the industry might consider it a bubble.”

For true believers the potential rewards are mind-boggling.

Dr Mills looks to a future in which massive solar parks filled with flat 16-metre mirrors as far as the eye can see will power vast tracts of our energy-thirsty world.

The Sun – the daddy of all nuclear reactors but without the waste – emits 6,000 times the energy needed by humans at any given moment. And the best places to collect all that natural light are hot, dry areas where few people live.

Ausra estimates mirrors laid out on an area just under 22,000 sq km – or about 10 per cent of the land mass of Nevada – could power the whole of the US. Europe’s needs would be met by linking to similar set-ups in the Sahara Desert.

“In China there is the northwest desert,” Dr Mills said. “In India, the Rajasthan Desert. We see that most areas, most big economies in the world, do have access to a desert or arid area where they can use this technology. The resource is there.”

A small pilot plant linked to a power station in New South Wales began life before Dr Mills left Australia.

Earlier this year utility Pacific Gas & Electric signed a deal to buy power from Ausra’s first US plant, which will be built in California. When it comes online in 2010, enough electricity will be generated for 120,000 homes.

Dr Mills hopes small first steps can inspire industry confidence to raise the billions required for expansion.

The question is not so much whether it will work, but how much it will cost.

Although significantly cheaper than other solar solutions, his thermal technology is almost twice as expensive as a new coal plant. But costs come down as more plants are built. Emissions-trading schemes and carbon taxes will also level the playing field.

For almost three decades Dr Mills has been a leading light in the solar industry.

Along with Qichu Zhang, a Chinese colleague at University of Sydney’s school of physics, he invented advanced heat-absorbing surfaces now used in the majority of solar hot-water heaters.

Most are made in China, which is keen to embrace solar power as a mainstream energy of the future.

Australia should also be on that list, and in the 1970s and early `80s the reputation of the “sunburned country” for encouraging research in renewable energies was second to none.

Dr Mills, a Canadian by birth, was one of a host of international scientists who had headed to Australia to work on scientific breakthroughs.

But the arrival of John Howard’s conservative government in 1996 signalled a downturn in support for alternative energy sources.

Emphasis shifted towards Australia’s biggest export and attempts to create “clean coal”, where carbon dioxide is extracted and pumped underground. The result was a brain drain as renewable firms went out of business or overseas.

Just over a year ago, Dr Mills avoided the former by reluctantly opting for the latter. Two weeks ago, he was visited by a group of Australian politicians who had paid precious little attention to his work when he was there.

“I have spent quite a long time in Australia, and battering my head against a wall for quite some time,” Dr Mills said, adding: “I think there is now real interest. And that is very, very gratifying indeed.”

Google, Chevron bet on solar energy to replace rising coal

Natural gas prices, emissions limits support case for switch

Bloomberg in San Francisco – Updated on May 24, 2008

Along a dusty two-lane highway in California’s Mojave Desert, 550,000 mirrors point skywards to make steam for electricity. Google, Chevron Corp and Goldman Sachs Group are betting this energy will become cheaper than coal.

Ausra’s 1,000-acre plant uses concentrated sunlight to generate power for as many as 112,500 homes in Southern California.

Rising natural gas prices and emissions limits may make solar thermal the fastest-growing energy source in the next 10 years, say backers including Vinod Khosla, the founder of computer maker Sun Microsystems.

Costs for the technology will fall below coal as soon as 2020, the United States government estimates.

JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo last year invested in the biggest solar plant built in a generation, Chevron and Google are funding research while Goldman is seeking land to lease as demand outpaces wind turbines and geothermal.

“Solar thermal can provide a substantial amount of our power, more than 50 per cent,” Mr Khosla said. “This is an industrial-strength solution.”

Developers need to overcome limited power lines and the need for energy-storage systems, while lobbying for the extension of tax credits.

“They have to prove their technology,” said Reese Tisdale, a senior analyst at consulting firm Emerging Energy Research, which estimates solar thermal will lure more than US$85 billion in investments by 2020. “There need to be some significant technology jumps.”

The Ardour Solar Energy Index, covering all forms of solar power, climbed 55 per cent in the 12 months to Thursday, outperforming an 8.5 per cent decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

Unlike photovoltaic solar panels that convert sunlight to electricity, solar thermal focuses sunrays with mirrors to heat oil in glass pipes to about 370 degrees Celsius. The oil turns water to steam, which spins an electric turbine.

Nine solar-thermal plants built in the California desert from 1985 to 1991 still operate, with Juno Beach, FPL Group running seven.

They have combined capacity of 354 MW, enough to power 230,000 Southern California homes.

Development slowed when Congress eliminated tax credits for alternative energy in the early 1990s. Laws put in place in 2005 give solar investors a 30 per cent tax credit.

At FPL’s solar-thermal site in the Mojave, about 145km northeast of Los Angeles, sunshine beats down 340 days a year.

The parabolic reflectors have an efficiency of more than 90 per cent, compared with 80 per cent for a typical bathroom mirror.

FPL uses 15,000-litre trucks to spray water weekly to clean the surfaces, 2 metres off the ground.

“There’s always been a solar resource here,” said Harvey Stephens, a production manager and one of 100 workers at the plant. “It’s just that it hasn’t been cost-effective enough.”

At noon on a typical workday, technicians in a two-story control room monitor a dozen screens showing the heat generated by each array of mirrors.

As temperatures creep past 700 degrees, icons blink to red from green, indicating the centre is ready to feed electricity to the California grid.

Temperatures and power production drop as clouds blow across the sky. Solar-thermal companies are trying to develop backup heat storage using pressurised boiling water or molten salt that can be warmed to more than 1,000 degrees.

Solar power “fits with our peak demand very well as long as the sun is co-operating”, said Michael Yackira, the chief executive of Sierra Pacific Resources, the company that owns utilities serving Las Vegas and other Nevada cities.

“When it’s cloudy, when it’s raining, when it’s dark, it doesn’t produce power.”

A solar-thermal unit that begins operation in 2010 will produce power at 14.2 US cents a kilowatt hour, almost triple the 4.8 US cents for a plant using pulverised coal, the Energy Information Administration estimates.

Costs for solar thermal may fall as low as 3.5 US cents a kilowatt hour by 2020, according to a report commissioned by the US Department of Energy.

Meanwhile, coal expenses may rise. Congress is considering limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.

The purchase of pollution permits may be required under a measure the Senate will begin debating next month.

Ausra’s plants would produce electricity at 10 US cents a kilowatt-hour starting in 2010, and the price would fall to eight US cents a few years later as it adopts systems with fewer parts that would be less costly when widely deployed, the company said.

Carol Chan – Updated on May 14, 2008 – SCMP

China WindPower Group plans to add eight to 10 plants with a capital commitment of about 700 million yuan (HK$781 million) every year to tap the growing demand for clean energy on the mainland, chief executive Liu Shunxing said yesterday.

“Installed capacity of wind power in China will increase rapidly in the future as Beijing hopes to have 10,000 megawatts of wind-generated energy installed by 2010, from 1,260 megawatts in 2005 to reduce reliance on highly polluting coal-fired power plants,” Mr Liu said.

China WindPower, a traditional Chinese medicine chain operator in Hong Kong until it changed its business last year, is running four wind power plants with a total installed capacity of 169.5 megawatts and is building another six with a total capacity of 297 megawatts.

Mr Liu said the company, formerly Hong Kong Pharmaceutical, would add more plants in ventures with state-owned companies.

Most of its plants have designed capacity of 49.5 megawatts each but as demand picks up and new technology becomes available, the company will build bigger scale projects.

It recently secured the rights to develop a 200-megawatt wind power project in Gansu province with Guohua Energy, a subsidiary of the mainland’s top coal producer China Shenhua Group.

Total investment of the Gansu project totalled 1.8 billion yuan. The two companies will sign the joint-venture contract in the second half this year and China WindPower could get a 25 per cent to 49 per cent stake, according to Mr Liu.

Mr Liu said the company had obtained the rights to develop wind power resources in Inner Mongolia and Hebei province with potential capacity of 6,000 megawatts, which was enough for the company’s development in the next 10 years.

Environment news.gov.hk

Hong Kong and Shenzhen have launched the first major technology co-operation project under the Shenzhen Hong Kong Innovation Circle to form a solar energy research and industrial platform in collaboration with DuPont.

Financial Secretary John Tsang said the project is a major co-operation initiative between Hong Kong and Shenzhen to upgrade the environment and boost the development of renewable energy.

“It also marks a significant milestone for the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Innovation Circle. The benefits of our joint efforts will be extended to other parts of the Mainland and Asia,” he said.

Innovative milestone

The Solar Energy Research & Industrial Platform is a major co-operation initiative between Hong Kong and Shenzhen to improve the environment and to promote the development of renewable energy. It also marks a significant milestone for the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Innovation Circle. The benefits of our joint efforts will be extended to other parts of the Mainland and Asia.

According to the letters of intent signed today, the Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks Corporation will establish a solar energy research and development support centre at Hong Kong Science Park to aid the development of solar energy and related technologies in the city and the Pearl River Delta region. DuPont will join the centre as the first anchor tenant by locating its global thin-film photovoltaic business, research and development centre in the park.

Meanwhile, the Shenzhen Municipal Government will collaborate with Hong Kong to provide land and other facilities to support the downstream development and manufacturing of solar energy products.

Cleaner energy

At the signing ceremony, Mr Tsang said solar energy is a clean and sustainable energy source and its development will help cut the use of fossil fuels in power generation.

“This will help reduce air pollution and the effects of global warming. The joint solar energy research and industrial platform is a major co-operation initiative between Hong Kong and Shenzhen to improve the environment and promote the development of renewable energy.

“We are pleased that DuPont has chosen to locate its global thin-film photovoltaic business, research and development centre in Hong Kong. The decision reinforces our position as a prime location for innovation and technology-based companies in the region.”

The latest studies show there is a growing global demand for the use of renewable energy. Secretary for Commerce & Economic Development Frederick Ma said the joint project will help meet this demand and bring about significant economic benefits to Hong Kong as it will create new jobs and spur further technological developments in this field.