THE SOLAR REVOLUTION IS COMING

International solar expert Dr Jeremy Leggett will discuss how global warming and national security have created an urgent need for solar power when he presents a public lecture, The Solar Revolution: A Dispatch from the Front Lines, at the University of New South Wales.

Presented by the UNSW Energy Research Development and Information Centre (ERDIC) the lecture will look at 'the solar revolution' the reasons for it and its implications for universities, industry and government.

Discussing the importance of solar power the director of ERDIC Associate Professor Tony Owen said: "Climate change and its well-documented global threat to food, water, and financial security is a strong rationale for accelerating the coming solar micopower revolution.

"However, following the events of September 11 nuclear power plants and the international oil trade have become targets for terrorists so national security is now also providing a new impetus for accelerating the proliferation of renewable energy technologies. But at what cost and how quickly can the transition be made? These are questions that will be addressed by Dr Leggett in this public lecture," he said.

Dr Leggett, author of The Carbon Wars, has an international profile as a campaigner for renewable energy, particularly solar power. Among other roles, Dr Leggett is chief executive of Solar Century, an UK-based solar electric power company and Fellow in Solar Energy at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute.

Between 1989 and 1996, Dr Leggett was an environmental campaigner with Greenpeace International and in 1996 he won the US Climate Institute's Award for Advancing Understanding, at which time the Washington Post described him as "one of the half-dozen experts most responsible for putting climate change on the international agenda."

Dr Leggett will be in Sydney and available for interviews on Monday, 19 November.

WHAT: The Solar Revolution: A Dispatch from the Front Lines, a free public lecture by Dr Jeremy Leggett
WHERE: Mathews Lecture Theatre A, UNSW Kensington Campus (enter via Gate 9 on High Street)
WHEN: 6.00pm, Wednesday, 21 November 2001
ENQUIRIES: Tony Owen, tel. (02) 9385 3351

MEDIA CONTACT: Victoria Collins, UNSW Public Affairs and Development, tel. 9385 3644