UNC team helps produce short documentary about solar energy investment in Spain
An international team of students and faculty from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, has launched a multimedia website documenting how investors in solar energy in Spain have suffered as the government has cut returns to investors.
The site — thesuncanbeyours.com — offers a possible object lesson to American solar investors, according to Dr. Tom Linden, director of the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media’s Science and Medical Journalism Program and co-executive producer of the project.
The website’s centerpiece video, “El sol puede ser tuyo" or "The sun can be yours," documents how one small-time investor faces financial pressure to pay off loans for a $130,000 investment that he thought would provide a nest egg for his retirement.
The video takes its title from the slogan adopted by the Spanish government in 2006 to encourage small-time investors to buy into solar farms throughout Spain. As the worldwide recession hit Spain, the central government cut previously promised returns on solar investments by as much as 50 percent.
In many cases, investors had put their homes up for collateral to invest in solar farms. As many as 62,000 Spaniards have invested in the solar industry.
In response to the Spanish government’s withdrawal of financial support for solar energy, 10,000 people demonstrated in Madrid in June 2014 in a rally that began at the Real Madrid soccer stadium and ended in front of the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism.
Recent graduates of the two universities collaborated in producing the multimedia site. Students from UNC included Courtni Kopietz, Daniel Lane, Jagmeet Mac and Rachel Tove-White. Students from the University of Navarra included Lucía Bretón, Amaia León, Bárbara Méndez and Alfredo Panadero.
Professors Álvaro Bonet and Bienvenido León from the Facultad de Comunicación at the University of Navarra also served as executive producers.
Read (in Spanish) about the project from the perspective of the University of Navarra’s Facultad de Comunicación.
The UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media has a strategic partnership with the University of Navarra’s School of Communication, in which the two schools participate in an annual faculty exchange and offer a study abroad program in which students can earn UNC course credit.
For more information about thesuncanbeyours.com, contact Linden at (919) 962-4078 or linden@unc.edu.
Pictured: Setting up interview with solar farm investor Juan Antonio Cabrero, third from left, are UNC master's graduate Daniel Lane (back to camera), professor Tom Linden and professor Álvaro Bonet from the University of Navarra's School of Communication. Photo by Courtni Kopietz.