Inspired early on by Australian renewable energy leaders such as Keith Roby, Peter Newman, and later on at the University of New South Wales, Martin Green and Stuart Wenham, Dr Watt has herself become a highly respected leader in the field, delivering her message for a sustainable future with clarity, determination and academic humility. After completing an undergraduate degree in Chemistry at the University of New England, Dr Watt undertook a PhD at Murdoch University on Energy Analysis.

“I think everything I’ve done in the 30 or more years since then has just confirmed that we really need to look at the earth as a limited planet. We need to start to work out what a sustainable level of energy use is and how we are going to transition towards that.”

For Dr Watt, the path to that transition is clear: irrespective of a global agreement, renewables are ready and waiting as a way to move towards sustainability.

“We can do renewables now at the drop of a hat, if people want to do them – they don’t have to wait for anything else to happen.”

In the not too distant future, she would like to see PV as an integral part of the entire building sector, backed by a net-zero energy building target, so that the possibility for PV to be used on every building in the country becomes a reality.

She sees a growing role for the Australian Solar Institute to help the nation find its place as a leader in solar research and applications, and a need for a shift to distributed generation as a means of energy supply.

Dr Watt would like to see a long-term policy vision for the renewable energy industry, including a 30 per cent renewable energy target by 2030, 40 per cent by 2040 and 50 per cent by 2050.

A realist, she also believes that we need to make better use of natural gas as a transition fuel, rather than continuing to burn and cross-subsidise coal.

Watching PV grow

Following the completion of her PhD, Dr Watt worked in one of the first state government Offices of Energy in Australia.

“Governments had always had mining departments, but they were just starting to have energy departments. I got a job in the new South Australian Office of Energy, where they wanted to start to look at the various renewable energy options, including photovoltaics (PV).

“At that stage PV was really only being used in a very small way in off-grid applications, but then Telecom (now Telstra) and other telecommunications and signalling companies started to take it more seriously for their remote applications and it became an interesting technology to watch.”

Reflecting on what has already been achieved, Dr Watt considers that the most important success for PV has been meeting projected cost reduction targets.

“Whatever we said 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, we’ve actually done; the cost projections have gone down consistently. This is still happening, which is the really major thing, because no one took it seriously and they didn’t expect that it would continue.”

She explains that this has enabled PV to move into the grid-connected electricity market, whereas it was previously always only thought of as an off-grid option.

“So in the last five years, the grid market has just exploded. It will change the way electricity networks are built and planned for forever as a result.”

As for Australia’s part in this success, Dr Watt says that we were a leader in both research and applications for a very long time, but that this is no longer the case.

“While we are still very highly thought of and still have some of the most fantastic world researchers here in this country, we will struggle to maintain that lead. We will struggle because now it’s big business and Australia has missed some of the recent opportunities.”

This said, Dr Watt is optimistic.

“There are always new opportunities. We need to really be serious about wanting to have a PV industry here, and looking at the appropriate part of the value chain for Australia to participate in.

“It’s a new and young industry so it’s not to say that there aren’t going to be new opportunities arising. Certainly the technology is developing quickly; new technologies are coming on stream all the time.”

Dr Watt hopes that the Australian Solar Institute, which was established in January 2009 under the Federal Government’s clean energy initiative, will also help drive research in Australia.

“Having the focus of the Australian Solar Institute will help because it will have a whole lot of research ideas coming past its doors. It will be able to get a good feel for the areas in which Australia is still leading, and find ways to leverage that much better than we have managed to do in the past.”

The Australian Photovoltaic Association

As Chair of the Australian PV Association (APVA), Dr Watt has seen the rapid development not only of a technology, but also of an industry.

The challenge has been to maintain a professional organisation with a very small budget, while keeping abreast of developments and communicating these to members, as well as deciding on positions to take and writing submissions – often every month, sometimes more.

“We’re not a straight lobby group. We are much more of an analytical group that thinks very carefully about its positions and about what it wishes to say about PV. We try to look at the data very carefully and see what it is we need to be doing. I think maintaining that credibility has been a good achievement.”

Removing cross subsidies for fossil fuels

Dr Watt considers that one of the essential measures at a global level, and for Australia, is the removal of cross-subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear energy.

“They’re [coal and nuclear] only as cost effective as they are because of huge government subsidies. Renewables are constantly being told they’ve got to compete to get into the mix. Well, you can’t compete when your opposition is hugely cross-subsidised.”

She cites countries that are importing all their fossil fuels at huge expense, such as the Pacific Islands, as examples of where the removal of cross-subsidies would result in an immediate take-off of renewables.

“It’s not as if renewables per se always need specific support. It’s the support that is being given elsewhere that’s causing the problem.”

Dr Watt would also like to see more support for the natural gas industry over coal.

“The gas industry would give us that intermediate means of transitioning and would provide a much better backup for renewables than coal can.”

Looking ahead – PV on every house

Dr Watt says that, in the short term, gross feed-in tariffs in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory are currently leading to high levels of deployment in the residential sector in particular.

“That’s likely to continue and extend into the commercial sector, not least because prices are continuing to fall at the same time as electricity prices are going up.”

In the longer term, she expects that the real value in large-scale solar generating plants, such as those funded by the Federal Government’s Solar Flagship Program will emerge.

“This takes it straight into competing head-on with other central generating technologies, which until now hasn’t been solar’s forte because it had so many advantages at the smaller scale that you didn’t worry about trying to do it on a large scale.”

In the not too distant future, Dr Watt would like to see zero-net energy targets for buildings – this would set the scene for having the whole planning process developed with solar in mind.

In this way, renewables would be integrated into the mainstream, as part of the fabric of what is being built, rather than an add-on or afterthought.

“I can’t imagine a future for Australia without PV on every house. I mean, really that is what we need to do if we want to be sustainable.”

Dr Muriel Watt on policy

Remote area applications

“If we want to move from using diesel in remote areas, governments need to step in to assist. PV is the more cost-effective option, it’s just that raising capital can be difficult in the rural sector and for remote residents.”

The renewable energy target

“The extended renewable energy target (RET) was fabulous, but the delay in passing legislation meant that a lot of the industry that had been set up with the previous mandatory renewable energy target was disbanded.

“The industry is a lot more cautious. The current target is only to 2020 – less than ten years away – coupled with a REC price that it can’t guess, and a slice of the market that it can’t guess, has created uncertainty.

“The renewable energy target needs to stay in place for the long term and it needs to be extended over time so that we know it’s worth investing here, and that we will be continuing to increase our renewable energy percentage.

“Solar water heaters in the RET also need to be addressed, and need to be given a separate allocation just like coal seam methane has been given. That needs to be done pretty soon. It’s creating serious problems in the market at the moment.”

The CPRS

“The proposal that the government has put up is not ideal. The recommendations that Garnaut made would have been a pretty good set of policies. I don’t particularly think that what they have put forward at the moment is going to do very much other than provide windfall gain for some of the large polluters.

“The only potentially good thing about having something get up is that it will start to put a carbon price signal into the market.”

Dr Muriel Watt’s top industry champions

• 1. Keith Roby – Murdoch University
• 2. Ernst Friedrich Schumacher – British economist
• 3. Peter Newman – Murdoch University (now Curtin University)
• 4. Hugh Outhred – University of NSW
• 5. Martin Green – University of New South Wales
• 6. Stuart Wenham – University of New South Wales

Dr Muriel Watt will be a speaker at EcoGen 2010, the premier clean energy industry event, which will take place at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, from 5-8 September.