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\nCadiz, Spain - While significant challenges remain and large-scale applications appear relatively far out on the horizon, smaller scale applications, such as organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), are already being built into a variety of electronic products. Industry pioneers, such as G24i, have begun manufacturing their first generation of products, which in G24i's case includes a DSC-powered mobile phone charger and an award-winning "Lighting Africa" portable lamp that marries cutting-edge LED and dye-sensitized thin-film PV technologies. \n\nLooking to bring off-grid electrical power options to people in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and a still growing range of African countries, G24i in May was awarded the World Bank Group's 2008 "Lighting Africa Development Marketplace" prize for its solar-powered LED light, which uses the company's proprietary dye-sensitized thin-film solar cells in concert with light emitting diodes (LED) produced by Dutch lighting manufacturer Lemnis. \n\nG24i dye-sensitized thin-film solar cells are proving themselves rugged enough to endure some of the harshest conditions on the planet. Besides enduring the rigors of operating in various African locations, the company's DSC cells were used to generate electrical power for British explorer Robert Swan and his team during their two-week 'E-Base Goes Live' project in which they traveled to Antarctica. Despite poor sunlight, the cells contributed to the successful powering of satellite, digital and video conferencing and other communications equipment throughout the two-week long expedition.\n\nThe first person to walk to the North and South Poles, Swan is moving on to an educational sailing around the world project and G24i is working on sails for his craft that will have thin-film dye-sensitized PV cells embedded in them. \n

Compared to other solar energy applications, solar cooling is a relatively new, but growing, technology. Many projects using the technology are still for the purposes of demonstration only, but a growing number of systems are being implemented all over the world for conventional use. In order to give an insight into this innovative technology, detailed information about the possible technical applications of solar cooling systems is provided in this section.\n\nPassive solar cooling, based on bioclimatic strategies such as sun protection using natural screening devices or increased cooling by using ponds or water basins o the roof or close to the external walls, is widely applied and should be the first step to take in cooling a building. Such measures are easier and less costly to implement, they decrease the need for additional cooling and, therefore, for additional energy demand (and also for investment). Sufficient insulation of the building also decreases the need for cooling, as well as for heating.\n\nIf the outcome of these measures is not sufficient in itself, a solar assisted cooling system may be an intelligent solution. In solar assisted cooling systems solar heat is used to drive the cooling process for air conditioning in buildings. Instead of using electricity, free solar thermal energy is used for cooling through a thermal-chemical sorption process.\n\n

LONDON, UK, August 12, 2008. Analyst New Energy Finance says the days of easy carbon trading may be over as the low hanging fruit of the cheap carbon credits in the developing world have now been harvested. To date, the cheapest way of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have come from projects eliminating high global warming potential (GWP) gases in developing countries, notably China. These projects involve the destruction of two waste gases from industrial facilities: the hydrofluorocarbon HFC-23 and nitrous dioxide, or 'laughing gas' (N2O), both of which are several thousand times more potent in terms of global warming that CO2. The size of the emissions reductions achievable from these projects relative to the scale of the investment required, that these carbon credits are so cheap - around €1/tCO2e. In comparison, costs claimed by project developers of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects are €5-15 per tonne and the global market price for carbon countries from developing countries are around €20/tCO2e.

A U.S. government official said dramatic improvements to lithium batteries are needed before they can efficiently power vehicles. Experts believe lithium-ion batteries are widely predicted to replace nickel metal-hydride batteries currently used in most hybrid vehicles like Toyota Co's popular Prius. The biggest challenges are extending the life of high-power lithium batteries and bringing down their relatively high cost, Tien Duong of the U.S. Department of Energy said on the sidelines of a lithium battery conference held at this government laboratory. "Life means 10 years, plus. For hybrids we know (their batteries) last 10 years plus. For the PHEV (plug-in electric vehicle), we don't know," Duong said. He did not specify what the costs should be. "One of the phenomenons that cuts short the life of the battery is power. You may have a lot of energy, but if you run out of power, that's no good," he said.

Although volatility in most assets is sharply lower than it was in November, oil price volatility has continued to climb. This rise in volatility, and resulting near $30-a-barrel oil price, is reflecting the same imbalances in the energy market that $147 oil did last summer: namely inadequate investment in basic infrastructure to produce, deliver, store and distribute energy. Last summer, attention focused on shortages in production capacity. However, present underlying shortages in storage and transportation are creating massive price distortions across the energy complex. Storage and transportation capacity provides the system with a buffer to supply-and-demand shocks by allowing it to run surpluses and deficits that smooth the normal cyclical swings in prices. As global storage capacity has failed to keep pace with growth in global demand over the past three decades, this buffer has shrunk relative to the size of the market, resulting in chronically higher than normal price volatility. Once infrastructure begins to constrain the ability of the market to run imbalances, prices have to create more of the adjustment process. Electricity markets are an extreme case of this. As power cannot be stored, supply must always equal demand, leaving price as the only mechanism to force the adjustment process. Accordingly, electricity is the most volatile of all assets. Due to inadequate infrastructure investment over the past several decades, oil is looking more like the electricity markets.

Copper demand is likely to remain relatively strong in 2009 despite the world economic slowdown, the chief executive of Norddeutsche Affinerie, Europe's largest copper refinery, said on Wednesday.

Still, the top 10, which is ranked according to Google's search volume index, offers a glimpse of relative interest in the technology. The numbers represent the likelihood of users in each country searching for "hybrid car," on a scale of 0-100. Google divides the total number of searches for each country by the number of searches for this particular term, and then normalizes the data based on the country's traffic volume. 1. United States: 100 2. Malaysia: 66 3. Canada: 60 4. Singapore: 56 5. Australia: 45 6. New Zealand: 42 7. South Korea: 35 8. India: 30 9. Hong Kong: 23 10. United Kingdom: 22

The road to grid parity for PV power generation will be difficult, needing five or more years to compete with utility power, unsubsidized, on a large scale, noted Mark Thirsk, managing partner at Linx Consulting, at a recent SEMI PV forecast luncheon (Sept. 18) in Santa Clara, CA Most input materials for PV production are in relative oversupply and will not constrain production, Thirsk pointed out - and for this reason manufacturers are conservative about capacity investment. In particular, his PV module production forecast (see Fig. 1, above) shows an overstep in demand in 2008. One reason for suppliers' reluctance to build capacity for entering the silicon supply chain is that it is an inefficient process. "Only about 15% of all the silicon going into the supply chain goes into the wafers, so it's a pretty wasteful and capital intensive process, so there is a lot of reluctance to build capacity," said Thirsk. Despite the efficiency challenges, Thirsk's forecast indicates that an oversupply may occur in 2009 Because >40% of PV grade silicon is lost at the wafering step, Thirsk believes this represents a significant opportunity for the right technology. Additionally, diamond wire is a potential replacement for slurry technology, but this technology is still immature. In the crystalline silicon (c-Si) value chain, Thirsk sees opportunities for optimizing mono-crystalline wafers with metal wrap technology and backside contacts; process optimization and material improvements would improve cell efficiency, and glass, wafer, backsheet, and grid improvements can enable more efficient light capture. Looking ahead, Thirsk told the audience that while thin-film technologies will enjoy strong growth "and may be more attractive to value-add materials and equipment suppliers, thin-film cell production will remain a minority share for the medium term." (see Fig. 3, below) He closed his presentation encouraging the creation of a Moore's Law type of roadmap for the PV

Another one in a series of studies on this topic. This one predicts an 87,000% increase in the demand for battery materials which is not very helpful. Exponential extrapolation from a small basis over a long time horizon can basically come up with any growth figure. The logistic growth curve is a much better and proven model for technology transitions.

"Demand for cobalt, copper, lithium, cadmium, and rare earth elements needed for solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, fuel cells, and nuclear reactors is set to explode in the coming years as countries around the world invest heavily in greening their economies".

Orginal source: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6473/30 (though (also behind a paywall) and http://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/50598. The latter mentions the 87000% figure referred to in the above comment.