White cliffs: from laboratory to reality -- Why solar? Why then? -- The big dish: looking beyond the 1990s -- Evolution: solar energy research as a distinct entity -- The wider Australian solar scene: 1970s-1990s -- solar energy research and commercial expansion -- Environment, climate change and solar energy -- Solar energy in changing times -- Appendix 1. List of people interviewed -- Appendix 2. Organisational flow chart -- Appendix 3. One page summary from 1970s to present -- Appendix 4. Solar energy: explaining the science -- Appendix 5. Recommendations from the 1995 expert group on renewable energy technologies -- Appendix 6. Photos
Summary
In 1970 a small group of physicists at The Australian National University decided to veer away from the accepted and expected directions in energy research and pursued the emerging discipline of solar energy. Over the next decade ANU joined a small cluster of research institutions, including the CSIRO, UNSW and the University of Sydney, to emerge as a world leader in solar energy technology. This book traces the history of solar energy research at ANU over 35 years from its origin, its sometimes controversial early stages, through its flagship projects to its current status as one of the world's best known solar energy research establishments. It is as much a story of the future as it is a history: Following the sun is the story of how an idea to pursue what was in 1970 a new and unpopular research path has come to underpin sustainable development in the 21st Century
