A recent article in ScienceDaily reports that scientists at North Carolina’s Wake Forest University have been using the berries from a common weed to create a dye that acts as a sunlight absorber to enhance the performance of low cost solar cells.

This and other developments focused on  higher efficiency photovoltaic cells that can be manufactured at lower costs or very cheap low performance systems are possible technological approaches that could help to prevent developing countries adding to climate change by offering an alternative to cheap fossil fuels. Many of the poorest countries in the world have an abundance of solar energy and available space but lack the financial and social capabilities to harness it.

Even in the developed nations the installation costs of solar generated electricity is so high that until recently the return on investment at the consumer level could take up to 20 years, hardly encouraging wide take-up of the technology. However, as reported in the Guardian in February, the UK government recently introduced new Feed In Tariffs (FIT) that can see households actually making a profit on a standard installation of up to £1000 a year from the power they generate, this will be particularly attractive as cost of commercially generated electricity are set to rise steeply over the next decade. The tariffs are index linked, tax free and guaranteed to continue for 25 years, the only down side is grants for installation are no longer available.