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Australia’s Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) recently launched its $100 million Solar ScaleUp Challenge and this could spell good news for climate change action. The challenge aims to connect solar technology engineers from across the country and make progress towards lowering carbon emissions. 

ARENA has been working toward the goal of making Australia a renewable energy superpower since their establishment in 2012. In 2021, ARENA experts outlined targets to support ultra low-cost solar photovoltaic technology, such as solar panels. The targets included improving efficiency to 30% while reducing prices to less than 30 cents per watt by 2030. Solar efficiency means how much solar energy hitting the solar panel is converted into electricity, which is measured in watts. Currently, commercial solar efficiency averages around 21% and costs about a dollar per watt produced.

The ScaleUp challenge invites engineers, innovators, financers and developers to submit projects that improve efficiency and reduce costs for solar photovoltaic technology. ARENA experts believe this technology has the potential to help the country reach the 43% carbon emission reduction target set by the Australian Government under the Paris Agreement.

“Australia’s true superpower lies in its potential to be the world’s best place to deploy ultra low-cost solar at a massive scale” says ARENA CEO Darren Miller. “We are keenly aware of the barriers preventing our dream from becoming a reality” and so this challenge is “something different to crack open the opportunity.” 

The ScaleUp challenge received support from all levels of government. Chris Bowen, Minister for Climate Change and Energy stated that, “to reach [targets set by the Paris Agreement] the world is rapidly moving to renewable energy, the cheapest form of energy.” He emphasized the importance of “breakthroughs in this technology happening,” especially as “The modern solar panel is in effect an Australian innovation, developed at the University of New South Wales.”

But not everyone shares Chris’s optimism. Chief Strategy Officer at solar technology company 5B Australia, Nicole Keupper-Russell, believes “urgent action is needed to drive [the world] from gigawatt scale solar to terawatt scale solar” in order to make a meaningful difference. That’s going from a billion watts of electricity to a trillion!

Isobel McAllister was an outstanding participant in Double Helix’s Young STEM Journalism Bootcamp. This year, Double Helix partnered with Letterly to launch the inaugural 4-week program, inviting students aged 8 to 18 to write science news articles on the topics that matter to them! This article went through multiple rounds of editing with 1-to-1 feedback from Letterly’s highly qualified and passionate writing coaches. Double Helix editors provided a final edit for accuracy and style.