Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced an A$1.4 billion ($1 billion) plan to install roughly 1 gigawatt of solar power.

Rudd told reporter during a tour of a power plant on Sunday that his government would release more details about the project later this year select project developers in the first half of 2010. The goal is to develop four power plants with a total of 1 gigawatt capacity.

Without the details, it's unclear how Australia plans to build 1 gigawatt of power projects with only $1 billion, which would bring the installation cost to $1 per watt. The costs of buying the solar panel and other equipment and installing a 1-megawatt system would cost around $6-$7 per watt in the United States. Solar panel makers, in general, are making products at around $2.50 per watt.  Building a solar-thermal power plant can be cheaper, but only at large scale (hundreds of megawatts in capacity).

The solar initiative is part of an A$4.5 billion ($3.44 billion) plan to invest in clean energy projects. Australia, a huge coal exporter and user, wants to invest A$2.4 billion ($1.83 billion) in technologies to reduce emissions from coal power plants, as A$465 million ($355.1 million) in R&D.

The country hopes to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

Australia's effort to launch a carbon emissions cap-and-trade program hit a snag recently when critics said the program would be too costly for businesses, which would have to buy emissions permits if they pollute above government-set limits. The government decided to postpone the program launch for a year go 2011.