FIJI has potential to turn to sunlight as a major source of electricity.
This is the view of Takuya Hoshii, an assistant professor of New Energy at the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Sciences and Technology.
He made the comment during a short visit to Fiji this week.
Professor Hoshii said Fiji had similar weather to northern Australia where solar farms actively harvested sunlight for renewable energy purposes.
"Fiji is in the region we call the sun belt, so the sunlight is very strong and this is similar to northern Australia," he said. "This makes it a good place to input solar energy initiatives.
"Of course, there is a lot of rain but even on cloudy days we are able to generate power from the sunlight."
Prof Hoshii, who specialises in solar cell research aimed at increasing the efficient and reducing the cost of solar power generation, also conducted a workshop for high school students.
He said he was impressed with the passion shown by the students.
"I think the most important thing is to make it more interesting for young people to get involved in this kind of work," he added.