Two major international energy events will take place in May 2001 in the Netherlands:
North Sun 2001, 6-8 May in Leiden, and Sustain 2001, 8-10 May in Amsterdam.

Introduction
One of the USA's largest and richest states,  California, is experiencing an energy crisis.
With a lack of investments in production capacities, local electricity producers
can no longer meet the state’s growing demand for electricity.  This problem, however,
is not limited to California or even to the USA. According to some experts, the California
electricity crisis anticipates a much bigger energy problem on a global scale.

With energy deficits looming, those who invest in solar energy techniques need not be
adversely affected by increased energy demands.  More and more people are coming
to recognize what pioneers in the renewable energy field have known for some time:
solar energy is a clean, inexhaustible, and readily available source of fuel  that can take
this planet into the future.  It is therefore no surprise that, worldwide, an ever-increasing
number of solar energy events are taking place.

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North Sun 2001,
the 9th international conference on solar energy in high latitudes,
has as its theme:  “Technology Meets Market in the Solar Age”, 6-8 May 2001

The North Sun 2001 Conference will bring information about the latest
technological developments in the application of solar energy at high latitudes,
with an emphasis on solar heating.  At high latitudes, cold winters create a higher heat
demand, and the large seasonal differences in irradiation ask for state-of-the-art energy storage.

Questions to be covered at this year’s conference include:
how can research and development respond to the challenges met in market development,
and what policies are successful in bringing solar technologies to the market?

The conference will be held in the 12th century Sint Pieterskerk, the imposing gothic church
of Leiden, one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands.  Leiden is especially noted as
the birthplace, in 1606, of Rembrandt van Rijn, the time-honored painter who for many centuries
has been revered for his masterly technique of expressing light on canvas.  Others know
Leiden as the town that, in the 17th century, offered the “founding fathers” of America,
the Pilgrims, religious freedom before they sailed to the New World.  Leiden, still very much
involved with minorities, in the late 1980's proclaimed itself officially as Stad van Vluchtelingen
("City of Refugees").

North Sun’s Kees van der Leun, a member of the organizing committee, will open
the conference on Sunday, 6 May.  Talks and discussions are scheduled until the conference’s
summary and closing address on Tuesday, 8 May.  Presentations by Dutch and other European
speakers will relate to one of four topics:  Policy and Community, Solar Energy in Buildings,
Solar Technology for high latitudes, and Solar Energy Education.

Besides listening to presentations by experts in the field, conference delegates will have
the opportunity to visit several solar projects in the Netherlands.  One excursion will lead
to the well-known Nieuwland 1 MW PV project, one of the world’s largest PV projects.
More than five hundred PV installations have been used in a new community of one-family houses
as well as in other buildings including a sports hall, a crèche, and an apartment building.

Another excursion will let delegates see solar renovation projects in the town of Zaandam
and an low-energy office building in Ijmuiden.  In Zaandam, the Brandaris apartment building
has a seven hundred and sixty square meter solar collector field mounted on the roof.  In Ijmuiden, the office
building of the Ministery of Transport, Public Works and Water Management was designed
to minimize heat losses during the winter.  In the summer season, cooling is supplied through
night ventilation combined with a large thermal mass.  The third excursion, organized
by the Netherlands Energy Research Foundation (ECN), features visits to private houses,
an office building, and a laboratory that are equipped with the latest solar energy high tech.

The North Sun Conference has been scheduled back to back with Sustain 2001, “The World
Sustainable Energy Exhibition and Conference”, to be held 8-10 May in Amsterdam.
Obviously the Sun’s sunspot activity, now at the maximum in its eleven year cycle, has a reflection
on the earthly plane with both of these significant energy events taking place in the Netherlands
in a concentrated period.

For more information on North Sun 2001, please see:
www.NorthSun.org