In many applications such as solar power conversion technologies, radiative heat transfer plays a significant role in the energy balance. For accurate performance predictions of solar power conversion devices the total hemispherical emittance and solar absorptance of surfaces need to be known with high accuracy. Often times the emittance of a surface is calculated from indirect spectral bidirectional or directional-hemispherical reflection measurements at room temperature which can significantly underestimate the total hemispherical emittance. Here, we report a simple steady-state calorimetric method to directly measure the total hemispherical emittance of opaque surfaces at elevated temperatures with a maximum experimental uncertainty of 5%. The method is further expanded to directly measure the solar absorptance of the surface at elevated temperature using a solar simulator. We show experimental total hemispherical emittance and solar absorptance results for various surfaces such as machine polished copper and stainless steel and several spectrally selective solar absorbers. We describe a methodology to characterize solar absorbers and apply it to a cermet-based spectrally selective solar absorber. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.