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 seven years.
Many people have heard the story of Dr Zhengrong 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.
While the centre will not be closing its doors tomorrow, its ground-breaking second and third-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?
Crikey encourages robust conversations on our website. However, we’re a small team, so sometimes we have to reluctantly turn comments off due to legal risk. Thanks for your understanding and in the meantime, have a read of our moderation guidelines.