In addition to developing technologies, UNSW's other output is graduates: its Photovoltaics Centre of Excellence runs the world's only undergraduate photovoltaic program. It produces 20 to 30 graduates a year, supplying the solar industry with talent. A few, like Blakers, have found positions locally. But lacking a domestic Australian industry to employ them, many of Green's graduates have to head overseas.
China in particular is happy to welcome them: three former UNSW post-doctoral graduates head Chinese solar panel makers. Among them, Zhengrong Shi, chief executive of Suntech Power, stands out. A physicist by training, Shi joined Green's group in 1989. During the 1990s, he worked part-time at Pacific Solar as the company's deputy research director, helping develop thin-film silicon technology.
In 2000, Shi was lured back to China to set up a solar manufacturing operation in Wuxi, a city two hours' drive west of Shanghai. Using second-hand equipment, Suntech quickly began production of conventional flatplate solar panels. Presciently, Shi locked in a long-term contract for silicon feedstock, thus immunising his company from the effects of the silicon shortage.
By 2005, thanks largely to insatiable demand from the German market, Suntech had broken into the world's top 10 solar panel manufacturers. That December, Shi took his company public on the New York Stock Exchange. It was one of the most successful floats of the year, making the Australian-Chinese scientist, at least on paper, a billionaire and Australia's fourth-richest person.
Suntech is expanding fast: sales in 2006 are expected to top A$700 million. That, as Green has pointedly noted, is far more than the total Australian exports of uranium. The company already runs two factories and is building a third, showpiece facility, due to open in May 2007. Shi is investing heavily in research and development, both focussing on incremental improvements to conventional panels and on next-generation thin-film technology.
He maintains close links with UNSW: Green's colleague Stuart Wenham splits his time between Sydney and Wuxi, where he works as Suntech's chief technology officer. The collaboration works both ways: Suntech staff train at the centre, the centre's students get experience using the company's facilities.
Shi is a generous donor to the centre, sponsoring joint research as well as undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships: research funding is about A$500,000 this year, and is set to double in 2007. "He's the best thing that ever happened to us," says Richard Corkish, who heads the school of photovoltaic and renewable energy engineering.
Corkish recently toured China on a trade mission with Australia's environment minister at the time, Ian Campbell. "There's immense interest in solar energy there," he comments. Indeed, China is investing heavily under ambitious new renewable energy legislation that calls for an enormous expansion in the domestic market, from 20 MW in 2005, to 10 GW in 2020 — a 500-fold increase. "There's a huge opportunity for technology transfer now," Corkish enthuses, "to give China a leg-up and also do well for ourselves at the same time."
