Professor Eicke R. Weber is Director/CEO of the Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore (BEARS) since January 2017. Before, he has been Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE and Professor for Physics / Solar Energy at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg, Germany, since 2006. Prof. Weber studied Physics at the University of Cologne, Germany, where he obtained his doctorate in 1976 and his habilitation in 1983. From 1983-2006 he was part of the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the University of California, Berkeley - since 1991 as Professor of Materials Science. Prof. Weber's field of research is semiconductor Materials Science, especially materials such as silicon and III/V compounds used for photovoltaics. He has published with his coworkers more than 600 papers, and is co-author of 8 patents. Prof. Weber was visiting professor at the Tohoku University in Sendai (1990), and at the Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan (2000). In 1994 he received an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award. Since 2003 he serves as founding president of the German Scholars Organization (GSO). In 2006 he received the Award of Merit from former German President Horst Kohler. In June 2013, Prof. Weber was honoured with the SolarWorld Einstein Award. In January 2014, he received the Zayed Future Energy Prize from the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates on behalf of Fraunhofer ISE. In 2015 he was elected president of the Association of European Renewable Energy Research Centers EUREC, and Vice-president of the International Solar Energy Society ISES. He served as founding president of the German Energy Storage Association BVES (2012-16). He is a member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech). In recent years, he has been an engaged speaker at international conferences, emphasizing the importance of a rapid transformation of our energy system towards a sustainable system, based on efficient use of renewable energy, that is rapidly becoming the most cost-effective source of power for the world.

演讲摘要: Transforming the world economy to a long-time sustainable system will be the key task of this century. Among all relevant topics for this complex process, transforming the energy system to a sustainable system based ultimately on 100% renewable energy is the most urgent. In addition to limitations of fossil and nuclear fuel we have to face the danger of grave changes of the world climate, caused by the hitherto unrestricted emissions of dangerous climate gases, first among those CO2. The challenge of the needed rapid transformation of the energy system within the next 20 years presents as well formidable economic opportunities: Renewable Energy from the sun, wind, hydropower and (waste-)biomass is already today economically competitive, in only one or two decades harvesting practically unlimited amounts of solar power by PV will be possible for 2 cts/kWh! PV electricity became cost-competitive with electricity produced by conventional sources and showed unprecedented growth within the last decade. Global PV production capacity more than doubled within the last five years to 100-120 GWp/a, bringing soon global PV installations into the Terawatt range. A key factor for this growth are continuous technology advances, aimed at higher efficiencies at reduced cost. Crystalline Silicon technology currently represents 90% of the global PV market. This technology is approaching a ceiling of 29% efficiency for a single-bandgap semiconductor. New approaches for higher efficiencies require heterojunctions, and several approaches will be discussed. These include heterojunctions on silicon, allowing to combine well-established large-scale Silicon PV technology with new technologies, such as low-cost III/V or Perovskite layers. This talk will conclude with addressing the technical and economic opportunities that lie ahead in the build-up of the needed industries in generation, distribution and storage of power provided by renewable energy technologies.