The godfather of solar predicts its future

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2023

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Setting world records. Combing through warehouses of old electronics. Seeding the Chinese solar industry from afar. This is the life of Martin Green, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and the director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics. Green’s work on solar panel design made the modern solar industry possible: 90% of solar panels made last year were based on his designs. He’s still going strong, too, regularly breaking new records in the pursuit of the perfect solar panel. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with the man many call “the godfather of solar” to hear firsthand how it happened, the next record he wants to break and whether solar panels are destined for space.

Read more:

Making Solar Panels Is 'Horrible' Business. The US Still Wants It. (Bloomberg)
Listen to Akshat’s conversation with Jenny Chase (Apple Podcasts)
Solar Power Investment Set to Surpass Oil Production Spending This Year (Bloomberg)
China Leaves Everyone Behind in Race for Renewable Energy (Bloomberg)
A transcript of this episode.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Jill Namatsi, David Stringer, Jenny Chase and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshadrati.
0:03.0	This week, red photons, blue photons, and profiting on sunshine.
0:08.0	When you think of the iPhone, there's one person that comes to mind, Steve Jobs.
0:23.6	Same with electric vehicles.
0:25.6	Elon Musk looms large, even though the industry now extends well beyond him.
0:31.6	But what if I asked you about the solar panel?
0:34.6	Does anyone come to mind?
0:36.6	Probably not. Even though it's one of the most
0:39.8	revolutionary pieces of technology, we have to reduce emissions. So I'm going to offer up a candidate,
0:46.6	Professor Martin Green, who has been called the godfather of solar.
0:52.1	We held the world record for silicon cell performance for three of the last four decades.
0:57.0	The two main competitive technologies, which last year count of 90% of the world's production,
1:03.0	originated in our laboratory in the 1980s.
1:07.0	Martin Green is a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney,
1:10.9	and the director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltecs.
1:15.5	And I want to emphasize something he just said, because it's wild.
1:20.1	90% of the solar panels produced last year were based on the inventions that came out of his lab.
1:27.4	Martin made his first solar panel in 1971, more than 50 years ago.
1:32.8	The industry at that point, if you would call it that, was tiny.
1:36.7	But it got a boost in the aftermath of the 1973 OPEC oil crisis,
1:41.6	as the US and other countries sought to reduce their reliance on imported
1:45.7	oil.
	...

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