Australia: Solar industry should push for policy action

OTHER countries are clamouring for our solar power expertise while in Australia the sun is setting on this energy source’s commercial potential.

Those wondering why might ask if the alliances the renewable sector has struck with large polluting companies could be a factor.

During APEC 2007, where climate change has been a big issue, some solar energy experts claimed that the renewable sector has made only half-hearted and late attempts to push their case, instead of hitting out hard with demands for concrete policy action in round one.
Expatriate Australian solar thermal scientist David Mills, whose company Ausra has major Silicon Valley investors behind it, cannot understand the ambivalence Down Under.

“The studious avoidance of large-scale solar technology in Australia is incomprehensible,” Dr Mills told BusinessDaily.

An inability to find sufficient private finance to take his solar thermal technology to market drove him out of the country last year and into the incubating arms of Khosla Ventures in California.

Run by Vinod Khosla — whose other underwriting success stories include Sun Microsystems, Amazon and Google — Khosla Ventures will oversee a soon-to-be announced commercialisation of the innovation Dr Mills developed when he was at the University of NSW.

“Silicon Valley is all about ideas and ideas are god here,” Dr Mills said.

“It’s easier to secure money for research and development here, there is no doubt about it. We are able to access more than six times the amount of funds offered to us in Australia.

“Our Australian finance partner was running out of money and not meeting its goals. They never gave us a single penny.

“We talked endlessly to banks in Australia and they wanted to give us very little for the equity they demanded.

Herald Sun