Memorandum 54
Submission from Keith Barnham, Emeritus
Professor of Physics, Imperial College London
I have been researching the physics of 3rd Generation
nano-structured photovoltaic (PV) solar cells for 18 years. My
group at Imperial has developed the strain-balanced quantum well
concentrator solar cell which has achieved efficiencies above
27%, close to the single-junction concentrator cell record and
twice the efficiency of 1st and 2nd Generation technologies. I
have recently co-founded two PV companies: a building-integrated
concentrator photovoltaic (BI-CPV) company Solarstructure and
a company QuantaSol which is commercialising the concentrator
cell in single junction and potentially record-breaking tandem-cell
configurations. QuantaSol was founded in June 2007 and has already
been voted into the list of the World's "top 100 low-carbon
pioneers" by CNBC European Business magazine [1].
I discuss below evidence that I accumulated
while presenting an invited paper on our work at the recent Asian
Photovoltaic Specialists Conference in Japan. The evidence clearly
shows that the UK is falling behind its industrial competitors
in implementing renewable electricity generation. I will argue
that were the UK to implement the policies which Germany initiated,
but many other countries are now following, distributed renewable
generation by PV and small-scale wind power could continue rising
exponentially and dwarf the loss of nuclear and coal capacity
before one new nuclear reactor is built.
My evidence is therefore relevant to one of
the issues on which the committee will focus:
Government policy towards enabling existing technologies
to meet targets
1. In the recent two energy reviews the
U.K. government either ignored, or dismissed outright, evidence
on the policies other counties have implemented to boost renewable
electricity generation. For example, neither review considered
the situation of Germany which has installed 10 times the wind
generation capacity and 200 times the photovoltaic capacity of
the U.K. [2], despite having an inferior wind resource and only
marginally better solar resource than the U.K.
2. The main reason why Germany has deployed
a much larger renewable capacity than the U.K. is the implementation
of a "feed-in tariff" which guarantees a price for renewable
electricity. The U.K. government is strongly opposed to feed-in
tariffs. The Energy White Paper of 2006 did not consider them
at all. The second in May 2007 [3] briefly mentions that other
European countries have introduced such schemes but dismisses
them in a few lines by saying that it is " . . . hard to
draw firm conclusions as to the effectiveness of these mechanisms
. . .". This ignores the evidence of Germany's clear lead
in installation of wind and PV and the estimated 200,000 new jobs
in renewable energy as a result.
3. As shown in Ref 2, were the UK to implement
the German government's policies, the U.K. could achieve 24 GW
of wind electrical capacity by 2020, far more than the loss of
base-load nuclear and coal generation expected by that time. Interestingly,
the British Wind Energy Association presentation to the 2006 Energy
Review [4] also predicted a UK wind capacity for 2020 equal to
our estimate of 24 GW. We were not aware of at the time we published
Ref 2.
4. In the case of photovoltaics (PV), it
was clear from the recent Asian PV conference [5] at which I presented
our latest results, that the exponential rise in photovoltaic
installations world wide which we highlighted in Ref 2 and Ref
6 continues. Japan is expecting to install 100 GW of PV by 2030.
In Germany the exponential rise is accelerating as the feed-in
tariff reduces and the market takes over. In the figure below
I have added the two most recent years of German experience since
we made our extrapolation in Ref 2. It can be seen that in both
years the installed capacity is above the prediction of the years
previous to 2004.
5. In 2006 Japan produced almost one GW
of PV cells and Germany installed nearly one GW of cells. In each
case this is equivalent to the capacity of a nuclear reactor.
In Refs 2 and 6 we discuss why the nuclear industry prefers to
report energies rather than capacities. However, it is clear that
when considering the rate at which a technology can be implemented,
capacity is the correct description. The nuclear lobby is hoping
to install one reactor a year in 10 years time in the UK. That
is very optimistic and at best a linear rise rather than an exponential
one (see figure below). If the UK implemented the German renewable
policy the figure below shows that more than 13 GW of PV could
be installed by 2020. With the 24 GW of wind capacity providing
the base-load, even without the contributions of marine, CHP and
energy efficiency, solar and wind alone could produce 37 GW of
capacity making irrelevant the 4 GW of nuclear capacity of new
nuclear build at its most optimistic. If this scenario is correct
there will be no market for expensive nuclear electricity.
6. It was very clear at the Asian conference
that, world-wide, commercial forces are indeed participating in,
and helping to maintain, the exponential expansion of PV. The
leading Japanese PV manufacturing company is building a new plant
which could produce 1 GW of Second Generation cells a year by
2009. My own company QuantaSol is planning to commercialise our
third Generation Cell on this timescale. The completely new field
of concentrator PV could be installing around 0.5GW by 2010 given
the demand expected from countries that have recently introduced
feed-in tariffs.
7. The expansion of building integrated
PV is set to be one of the new areas of PV application which will
help to maintain the exponential acceleration. For example, as
we point out in Ref. 6, in the U.K. approximately two thirds of
the electricity is consumed in residential, public and commercial
buildings. At least seven times the solar radiant energy falls
on those buildings as the electricity consumed inside. Even in
the UK, this means that more than three times the current nuclear
contribution could be generated by covering all roof areas and
south-facing walls with the present day 1st and 2nd generation
cells which are around 13% efficient. More elegantly, given that
these cells are opaque while our 3rd generation cells are very
small and 2-3 times as efficient, we outlined in Ref 6 ways that
smart windows could use transparent lenses as blinds to generate
electricity and reduce air-conditioning and illumination demand
while still functioning as windows and allowing diffuse sunlight
to illuminate the interior.
8. In conclusion the "distributed nature"
of PV (and small scale wind) means that once stimulated by effective
government policies, as has already happened in Germany and Japan
the market takes over. As has been demonstrated for other novel
and popular electrical consumer goods, the market can sustain
exponential rises that are not possible with large, central generation.
Hence the market, and popular demand, could lead to PV and wind
together exceeding by many times the contribution of new nuclear
build.
REFERENCES
[1] http://cnbceb.com/2008/01/01/the-top-100-low-carbon-pioneers/
January 08.
[2] "Vorsprung durch technik",
Keith Barnham and Massimo Mazzer, New Statesman Supplement Monday
15 May 2006.
[3] "Meeting the Energy Challenge",
a white paper on energy, DTI, CM7124, May 2007.
[4] "Our Energy Challenge",
Securing clean affordable energy for the long-term, British Wind
Energy Association (BWEA) response to the 2006, UK Government
Energy Review, April 2006, (24 GW 2020).
[5] 17th International Photovoltaic Science and
Engineering Conference (PVSEC-17) at Fukuoka, Japan.
[6] "Resolving the Energy Crisis: Nuclear
or Photovoltaics", K W J Barnham, M Mazzer, B Clive, Nature
Materials, 5, 161 (2006).
Figure. Installed PV capacity in Germany
and the UK from Ref 2 and extrapolations based on the performance
in the years up to 2004 (dotted lines). The actual cumulative
installation capacity achieved in Germany in 2005 and 2006 is
added. The upper extrapolation of the UK data (broken line) assumes
that policy similar to the German policy is introduced and the
UK follows the trend observed by Germany in years to 2004. This
extrapolates to above 13 GW by 2020. This is much more than the
optimistic proposal of BNFL of one nuclear reactor a year from
2017 (crosses). The independent predictions of both Ref 2 and
Ref 4 are for 24 GW of wind power capacity by 2020.
January 2008
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