By Neena Bhandari, IANS
Sydney : Indian engineers will receive an Australian government sponsorship package to study at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney with world class solar power experts.
The Australian government has awarded UNSW A$5.2 million to train next-generation solar energy engineers from Asia-Pacific nations, specifically India and China, as part of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP), of which India is a leading member.
The university’s School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering offers the world’s first photovoltaic and energy engineering degree programme. The school will train 145 overseas students between 2008-11. It will offer five PhD and 80 Masters part-sponsored places, 40 in 2008 and 40 in 2009, for students from India, China or South Korea.
Globally, the solar power sector is growing at about 40 percent a year, constrained only by the limited supplies of purified silicon for solar cells. Efficiencies in silicon-based solar cells have increased from six percent in early cells to an average of 16 percent in industrial production today.
India’s rising power demand and existing electricity shortfall coupled with its rapidly growing economy and rising greenhouse gas emissions means solar power is expected to play an important role in the country’s future.
“Solar will be vastly important for India. Solar has enormous potential to bring clean power to hundreds of millions of rural and urban Indians not yet connected to the electricity grid and to take pressure off strained existing electricity supplies,” said Richard Corkish, Head of the UNSW School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering.
“India has been focussed on wind and biomass as renewable energy sources, but is just now coming to realise the great potential of solar,” Corkish added.
The APP brings together India, Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and the United States to address the challenges of climate change, energy security and air pollution in a way that encourages economic development and reduces poverty. These Asia-Pacific countries represent around half the world’s emissions, energy use, GDP and population.