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New Institute Director Named
Amit Ronen, Deputy Chief of Staff for U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), has been named the new Director of GW’s Solar Institute. Ken Zweibel, solar photovoltaics expert and the Institute’s Director for the past five years, announced his retirement earlier this year.
Mr. Ronen has been a widely recognized leader in Federal clean energy policy for over a decade. Mr. Ronen will take over as Director in early May.
Read more about the new Solar Institute Director...
Symposium 2013
On April 23rd, the GW Solar Institute held its Fifth Annual Solar Symposium, “Solar Energy: Going Global.”
This year's Symposium, marked the fifth consecutive year that the Solar Institute convened this day-long event featuring the solar industry's most important business and policy decisionmakers. The event covered the opening of new markets worldwide for both photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies, discussing both the policy and finance implications of these new frontiers. Photos and video from the event will be availble soon.
View content from previous Solar Symposia...
Photo credit: Doug Canter
![[Image: Annual Report Cover]](http://solar.gwu.edu/img/AR2012_147px.png "Read the 2012 Annual Report!")
Annual Report 2012
The Solar Institute's 2012 Annual Report underscores the Institute's ongoing role in providing advice to decisionmakers in Washington, as well as recent accomplishments in research and outreach. Among the important policy and technical research efforts highlighted in the Annual Report are a report on the tradition of incentives in the US energy field - "Energy Incentives: The Power Behind the Power" - and new research into the characteristics and amelioration of variability in photovoltaics. Read the Annual Report to learn more about the Institute's activities over the last year. Read the report...
![[Image: Report Icon]](http://solar.gwu.edu/img/ChinaSolarPolicy_iconB.jpg "Read the Report!")
Sunny Dispositions: ITC Recapture
Joel Meister, GW BA '07 and a third-year student in the GW Law School (currently working at the Solar Energy Industries Association), provided research on the subject of modernizing certain tax rules that affect the solar energy industry. In his paper, "Sunny Dispositions: Modernizing Investment Tax Credit Recapture Rules for Solar Energy Project Finance After The Stimulus", Meister examines how solar project developers will grapple with the transition from the expired Section 1603 Treasury Grant Program to the Investment Tax Credit that requires "recapture" of tax benefits if a company sells or transfers its solar system within five years of installation. Meister traces the genesis of the recapture rules and explores the negative implications of the recapture rules for the solar industry. Read the report...
![[Image: Solar Award Logo]](http://solar.gwu.edu/img/SolarAwardsWinner2011145px.png)
Excellence in Solar
The magazine Solar International recently announced the winners of its Solar Industry Awards for 2011. The awards are given each year to leading solar industry firms for innovations in a particular field. The GW Solar Institute Director, Ken Zweibel, was honored as this year's recipient of the "SOLAR Award for Excellence - Professional". The award panel had the following words to say about the Director:
Read the award announcement...Each year the panel (subjectively) chooses an individual that we feel has driven the industry forward in a way that deserves notice and merit. While we fully understand that any innovative technical process takes an army of people and organizations to come to fruition, some individuals stand out by their individual personality, ambassador qualities or their driving energy in an organization leading to world class outputs. This year's recipient hits all those targets...
![[Image: Journal Cover]](http://journals.cambridge.org/cover_images/ENP/ENP.jpg)
DoD and Solar
Environmental Practice, the quarterly journal published by the National Association of Environmental Professionals will feature Solar Institute supported research from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in their Fall 2011 edition. Research from the report, Determination of Solar Energy Transition Potential of Department of Defense Facilities and Nontactical Vehicles: An Application of Multicriteria Decision Theory Modeling and Simulation Approaches, by Ariel Castillo and Professor Jonathan Deason, helped inform early development of the Department of Defense Energy Security Act. More Solar Institute Research...