When making a science documentary, shouldn’t a good science background be involved in the production?

Please note: The solar power of today is not the solar power of the 1970s (or the 80s, or the 90s…)! Read on…

I have viewed the two recent big documentaries on solar power: The Power of the Sun and Saved by the Sun. In comparison, my summary argument: a scientific background goes a long, long way to gelling the message of a science documentary.

For those short on time: watch The Power of the Sun and show it to all of your friends. You can purchase the DVD for US$10 +shipping (half price if you are a teacher!). It provides the scientific background of silicon photovoltaics (PV), as well as a future for solar power. The latter documentary is a highly-diluted and out-dated science commentary with a generous mix of 60s and 70s nostalgia to mask the lack of content and vision.

Both films are produced in the US, and deal with the recent boost in development and financial interest in solar power. The executive producer of The Power of the Sun was Nobel Laureate Walter Kohn, while Saved by the Sun was produced by Steven Latham, Larry Klein, and Evan I. Schwartz (scientific backgrounds unknown) under the NOVA series of PBS television.

While the NOVA special has some value in getting people aware of commercially available PV, there is a distinct lack of presentation of the science and the broad range of industries already involved in major PV businesses. They don’t give credit where it is due, and misplace other credits by a lack of depth of inquiry. Instead of talking about the fact that PV in Japan is now unsubsidized, and many new Japanese homes have PV funding incorporated into home loans, the film implied how “curious” the Germans are for creating a heavily subsidized solar market and entire farms of PV. Skeptical economists are called in to reassure us that solar energy is still a long way off folks. That could never happen in the USA, economic analysts scoff. Except that it is happening in the rest of the world, and we’ve woven ourselves into a global economy. A market with a 37% cumulative growth rate (meaning a doubling time of 2.2 years), and a 2006 peak power output of ~2.5 GW (Gigawatts) is not an economic fringe commodity.

Following this disjoint, Prof. Nate Lewis of Cal Tech is interviewed for his contributions to photoelectrochemistry (which are very significant). However, instead of going into the new chemistry his group works on, he is essentially given credit for recently creating dye-sensitized solar cells (that were first developed by Brian O’Regan and Michael Grätzel in Switzerland and reported in Nature in 1991). Couldn’t the filmmakers have asked Nate, so how long has this been around?

Add on top of all of this, a penchant for 1960s and 1970s counter cultural pop tunes including the word “sun” or “sunshine”, and you have officially alienated the new generation of PV consumers. Thank you NOVA and PBS.

Prof. Kohn had informed us at the American Chemical Society’s viewing of The Power of the Sun, that PBS turned down the opportunity to show this film. It was deemed too controversial, due to a comment by narrator John Cleese that the world was “dangerously dependent on fossil fuels, even addicted to them”, and due to a suggestion that fossil fuel combustion may even be linked to “global warming”. Curiously, one G. W. Bush did see The Power of the Sun in a personal viewing, and something of that phrase slipped into one of his speeches.

Hmm, I guess good science does have an influence on policy.

• Plot developed by JRSB from data by PVNews and the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development.