Andrew Blakers is a Professor of Engineering at the Australian National University. He was a lead developer of the PERC silicon solar cell, for which he was joint winner of the 2023 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. PERC has 80% of the global solar market, cumulative module sales of US$150 billion and is mitigating 2 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions through displacement of coal. Professor Blakers engages in analysis of energy systems with 80-100 per cent penetration by solar and wind supported by storage, for which he was joint winner of the 2018 Eureka Prize for Environmental Research. His team developed a comprehensive global atlas of a million off-river pumped hydro energy storage sites, which is 100 times more storage than needed to support a global fully-decarbonised, 100 per cent renewable energy system.

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