Europe has basically given up trying to catch up with China on crystalline silicon solar technology and much research carried out at universities in Europe is based on undermining crystalline silicon technology with Perovskite thin film approaches, which threaten to be far cheaper than Silicon in the long run. So it came as little surprise when last week a European Perovskite Initiative (Epki) was launched by a group of academics – led by Solliance (itself a 2010 joint venture between Dutch and Belgian interests) and UK consulting firm Greensquare. However the number of cooperating research institutes has gone up an order of magnitude, all agreeing to share research on Perovskite breakthroughs and to coordinate future work. This includes a total…