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Solar insolation is the rate of solar radiation (kilowatt-hours per square meter) over an area.The world map shows the amount of solar energy in hours, received each day on an optimally tilted surface during the worst month of the year. This is used as an indicator of solar energy potential.

A new era for solar power is approaching. Long derided as uneconomic, it is gaining ground as technologies improve and the cost of traditional energy sources rises. Within three to seven years, unsubsidized solar power could cost no more to end customers in many markets, such as California and Italy, than electricity generated by fossil fuels or by renewable alternatives to solar. By 2020, global installed solar capacity could be 20 to 40 times its level today.

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years. The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah

South Australia's solar feed-in scheme, which pays people double the going rate for excess solar power they feed back into the electricity grid, has come into effect. Premier Mike Rann said the scheme could provide for a bonus payment to households of up to $400 a year.

Tenders are being called for companies to design, supply and install energy and rainwater storage solutions and also to supply and install innovative, energy efficient lighting options for Government schools.

“Under the Australian Government’s National Solar Schools Program, schools are being offered grants of up to $20,000 for solar technology and up to $30,000 for solar hot water systems, rainwater tanks and other energy efficiency measures,” Mr Bartlett said.

The advanced industrialized economies were lucky to have had their development fuelled by cheap fossil energy. Today’s developing economies have a much tougher challenge. It was a very short window of opportunity which opened just about 150 years ago and is likely to close in the next 40 years, by when the known reserves will be depleted at current levels of consumption. All told, 200 years is a very brief interlude considering thousands of years of human civilization and hopefully hundreds of thousands of years yet to come. At some time in the distant future, they will look back and remark that the age of fossil fuel was a short inflection point, a point at which humanity passed through the bottleneck of dependency on oil from the ground. Before that point, humanity’s primary source of energy was the sun, and so it will be after that point.

The term cleantech therefore tends to be a more amorphous industry group than, say, environmental services, and a less rigid investment asset class than, say, financial services.Sectors that appear to fit into the definition of cleantech without dispute include:Renewable energy – wind, solar thermal and photovoltaics, wave, tidal, hydro, geothermal, biomass and biogas;Water technologies that increase efficiency;Energy efficiency, green buildings and biomaterials;Waste management and recycling;Energy storage and fuel cell technologies;Low emission vehicle technologies; andEnvironmental Services