The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has today released the latest Photovoltaics Status Report. This scientific study combines analysis of up-to-date international manufacturing and market implementation data throughout 2007 with subsequent strategic and political developments up to September 2008. 

Equipment for making wafer-based silicon solar cells reports throughput not in hundreds, but in thousands of wafers/hour. Equipment for deposition of amorphous silicon must accommodate substrates as large as 5.7 square meters. Though the processes used in solar cell manufacturing appear familiar at first glance, the actual equipment requirements are substantially different. By Katherine Derbyshire, Contributing Editor, SST

Right after his election, the German pope said: “Solar energy is essential to preserve creation.” Now, pope Benedikt XVI  has followed up his words with action. A huge solar panel on the roof of the Vatican’s Audience Hall has been inaugurated.

Ed Miliband has submitted an amendment to the Energy Bill to increase the size of the proposed cap on renewable energy feed-in tariffs to 5MW.

“We cannot let the financial and economic crisis delay the policy action that is urgently needed to ensure secure energy supplies and to curtail rising emissions of greenhouse gases. We must usher in a global energy revolution by improving energy efficiency and increasing the deployment of low-carbon energy,” said Nobuo Tanaka, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) today in London at the launch of the World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2008 – the latest edition of the annual IEA flagship publication.

A new method of producing high efficiency and easily available biofuels from wood, grass and plants could soon be available, according to researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Germany. By Jane Burgermeister, European Correspondent

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered and demonstrated a new method for overcoming two major hurdles facing solar energy.

Researchers have created a new material that overcomes two of the major obstacles to solar power: it absorbs all the energy contained in sunlight, and generates electrons in a way that makes them easier to capture.