Who framed George Cove and kidnapped the solar future?

Welcome back to Wicked Problems. The climate tech show and newsletter that knows better than to mess with former president of Ireland Mary Robinson.In this episode, Richard Delevan is joined by Dr. Sugandha Srivistav of the Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. Sugandha rediscovered the story of George Cove, a forgotten inventor who may have stumbled on a working photovoltaic cell - whose “sun-ray machine” gained the equivalent of tens of millions in investment dollars and worldwide media attention. In 1909, decades before Bell Labs in the 1950s started to pick up where he left off. Why have we never heard of him? It might have something to do with his claim that he was kidnapped and told he’d be released if he accepted a payoff and stopped his research. Two years later his company disappeared.Wicked Problems is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Srivistav applied Wright’s Law to imagine what would have happened if Cove’s work had led to other innovations in solar PV - and reckons that solar would have become the cheapest source of electricity at least 20 years earlier.How else could the world be different? Would we be having a climate crisis at all?Read her October 2023 report: Lost potential: how the kidnapping of a solar energy pioneer impacted the cost of renewable energy and the climate crisisAnd her article in The Conversation.Sugandha’s Catalysts:The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904), by Ida TarbellThe Current War (2017), starring Benedict CumberbatchTitan, The Life of John D. Rockefeller (1998), by Ron ChernowYou can also find this episode onApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeand anywhere you get podcasts.Get in touch at news.wickedproblems.uk where you can also get our newsletter and consider getting a paid subscription to help support our work.If you liked this conversation, consider sharing it with your favourite solar entrepreneur, before they get kidnapped.Thanks for listening.Thank you for reading Wicked Problems. This post is public so feel free to share it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.