Why solar research should stop leading with climate

A new paper in Progress in Photovoltaics argues that solar energy is heading for its Kodak moment. It is signed by fifteen researchers at eleven institutions on four continents, led by Rebecca Saive of UT's MESA+ Institute. It is a coalition statement in the field's main journal, warning that solar has become so visibly successful that funders, students, and policymakers now treat it as a finished problem.

The evidence is concrete. Conference attendance for fundamental solar research is dropping outside the perovskite community. Students who would have started a PhD in solar a decade ago are going into quantum technology instead.

For thirty years, climate has been the main case for solar. Saive and her co-authors want the solar community to stop leading with it. Instead, solar researchers should replace it with themes like economic competitiveness, national resilience, and energy independence. They point to Ukraine, where decentralised solar generation cut recovery time after infrastructure attacks to three to six hours, compared with twelve to eighteen hours for centralised supply.

The obvious objection is that this concedes too much. If climate scientists stop making the climate argument, who will? Dropping the frame risks legitimising the politics that forced the retreat in the first place.

Saive answers that the argument was already failing with the people who matter. Funders and policymakers who are unmoved by climate urgency will not be convinced by more of the same. Resilience and economic strength give those audiences a reason to care that actually works for them. Climate stays in the picture. It just stops being the opening line.

The funding argument sits atop a workforce argument. Saive warns: "We don’t want a society that does not possess the workforce to understand and operate existing technology, let alone advance technology to the next needed level." The paper uses Germany's nuclear phase-out as the example. Once the skilled people move on, restarting is much harder than shutting down.

For a Dutch reader, this is not a distant warning. The Netherlands is already missing energy transition targets, partly due to a lack of trained people. The coalition's point is that letting basic solar research wither now sets up the same problem, a generation later, in the technology the country is betting on. As Saive puts it, basic research is how we "train the talent to understand, operate and advance our energy system."

Prof Dr Rebecca Saive is a professor of Photovoltaic Materials at the University of Twente, where she leads a research group within the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology. The paper, "The Need for Fundamental Photovoltaics Research to Ensure Energy Security", is open access and can be read online.

DOI: 10.1002/pip.70105