Dear friends and colleagues,

As the world’s largest and most complete technical conference on concentrating solar technologies, the SolarPACES annual conference is needed more each year as we head towards the 100% renewable world. Every year it becomes more obvious that urgent action is required to power our global civilization without fossil fuels. The scientific evidence for the threat of climate change is undeniable. Many nations have already adopted plans to become climate neutral by 2050 or even before, and now specific policies need to be enacted to unleash the advantages that CSP is ready to bring to meet these challenges.

Our technology can not only contribute reliability and dispatchable solar to a renewable electricity system but is also key to decarbonizing industrial and residential heat, for solar fuels production and for low-cost and long-duration energy storage technologies. Many studies show that both the electrical and thermal forms of solar energy will be urgently needed to be successful in our decarbonization effort, and solar thermal energy is ready to play its part. Our challenge now is to convince regulators and investors to create the opportunities for these next projects.

I am convinced that our conference creates the right forum to discuss these aspects and serves as a catalyst to initiate new activities in all sectors that will accelerate the implementation of our technologies. As you know, SolarPACES 2021 will be our second online conference. Though we anticipate and desire a return to our normal in-person conference in 2022,  SolarPACES 2020 revealed many benefits to being online, with more of us able to share our work and participate from our home office, and we expect to make SolarPACES 2021 even more “lively” due to our experience and advanced tools now available.

On behalf of the conference organizing committee, as Chairman of the SolarPACES Executive Committee, I am delighted to invite you to join us on-line this year, and look forward to being able to meet you all in person in the future. Please contribute actively to the discussion with your ideas.

Thanks for joining,

Robert Pitz-Paal

Chair, SolarPACES Conference 2021
Chairman, SolarPACES Executive Committee
Director, Solar Research Institute, DLR