Every hour the sun bathes Earth with as much energy as all human civilization uses in an entire year. Let me tell you about some spectacular and pragmatic solar technologies helping to reduce our global carbon footprint.
Austrian and Japanese scientists have recently pioneered solar cells thinner than a thread of spider silk. These new ultra thin solar cells are so flexible they can be wrapped tightly around a single human hair.
These extremely thin, light and flexible solar cells will power devices like portable electrical charging units or electronic textiles worn on clothing. And they are set to replace, in the very near future, batteries that power health sensors monitoring elderly or infirm people.
Australian researchers from The University of Melbourne and CSIRO have developed solar panels, which can be painted or printed directly onto surfaces. These solar cells are so small they can be suspended in liquid such as ink. The nano-crystals have a diameter of just a few millionths of a millimeter.
UCLA scientists have invented solar cells from transparent organic polymers that are more durable and malleable than silicon. These clear solar cells will be applied to windows enabling them to generate energy. They will also be used in laptops, mobile phones and on airplanes.
Last month (July 2012) the University of Michigan won its fourth straight car race at the American Solar Challenge. The 8-day race that started in Rochester, NY covered 1,650 miles and ended in St Paul, Minn. The UM car Quantum beat 17 other competitors and triumphed despite rain on the second and last day.
Also last month, Solar Impulse, a solar airplane, completed a 4,000-mile intercontinental journey, which commenced in Payerne, Switzerland and flew to Rabat, Morocco before returning to where it began. This sleek-looking aircraft is outfitted with 12,000 solar cells, and in April of 2010 it successfully undertook a 26-hour flight.
Germany is currently the world's leading solar power producer at 22 gigawatts, equivalent to 20 nuclear power stations running at full capacity. Solar energy supplies Germany with one third of its electricity during workdays and almost half its power on weekends when factories and offices are closed.
The Obama Administration has quietly approved 16 large-scale solar projects on public lands so far, and recently began a fast-tracking of 17 more tracts for large-scale solar projects across the West. These made in America solar farms will provide an additional 5,700 megawatts or enough power for 1.7 million homes.
Once upon a time solar was about three times more expensive than subsidized natural gases. But since the scale of economy for solar has ramped-up, its price has tumbled by two-thirds. In fact, from 2009-2010 solar in the U.S. grew by 102 percent. By 2016, less than three and a half years from now, solar and fossil fuels will be able to compete head to head.
It's a no-brainer, made in America solar or fracking and foreign oil?
We have firmly entered The Age of Energy Transformation and third generation solar technologies will be ready for the market place within 24 months.
From everyday products to windows and rooftops, solar technologies are here; and within years rather than decades they will become part of everyone's daily lives.
Earth Dr Reese Halter is an award-winning broadcaster and distinguished biologist. His latest books are: The Incomparable Honeybee and The Insatiable Bark Beetle.
Follow Dr. Reese Halter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DrReeseHalter
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There is a technology that can do this, and unsurprisingly it was unknown in the 18th century. It uses the energy of the atomic nucleus, inordinately larger than that of its electron shells. Uranium and thorium contain the energy from the cataclysmic collapse of entire stars, much more massive than our Sun, called supernovae. The Integral Fast Reactor, developed under US government contract by Argonne National Labs, succeeded in building a reactor that created as much fissile fuel as it consumed, in principle until all its uranium was made fissile, and did so in a way that left only short-lived waste, at a rate of less than a ton per Gigawatt-year,.It did so in a way that was immune to meltdown, as it proved in April 1986, a week or so before Chernobyl.
It should be "human industrial civilization". We also use a great deal of solar energy for every gallon of water we consume, and a very great deal for every calorie of food.
But the global warming problem is that "Every hour the Earth has to get rid of as much solar energy as all human industry uses in an entire year." The increasing proportion of CO2 makes this more difficult.
The problem is, that the solar energy is dilute, and the Earth's atmosphere is chaotic. Coal burning, and gas turbines, use the products of centuries of Carboniferous Era sequestration of carbon at a rate of thousands of years' carbon sequestration every year. The halting of this requires that we shut down all the gas turbines and all the coal burning except perhaps what we need for smelting metals.
No feasible amount of wind, solar, biomass, or even hydropower can do this. Geothermal is new-ish, but difficult to arrange if you're not close to the Ring of Fire.
Been crunching numbers for a megawatt suspended above the clouds (you know it's a sunny day every day up there right?) and brought down to earth via superconductor. With twelve kilowatts per household.
Everything on earth should be living, very little to next to nothing beats chlorophyll in the long term; a solar farm on earth is a desert in disguise.
Solar cells should be in the sky, transparent, or on something already wo-man made.
The Cost of Fuel Cell Catalysts Could Drop by a Factor of 650
Do you own an expensive platinum based fuel cell that you would like to replace with a cheaper carbon nanotube based fuel cell?
Do you know anybody who does?
:-)
Pretty much everything else is, at this moment, and for the foreseeable future, either laboratory research without product, or restricted to toy applications.
As a small child growing up in the country, we used kerosene lamps. We got by, and could move the lamps around to where the light was needed. It doesn't require too much imagination to figure out how we can get a similar or better level of illumination with very cheap solar lights that even the poor can afford. The more local and small-scale the energy source can be, the more likely it is to be sustainable. But the money guys don't like this kind of reasoning.
I see a lot of complaints about utility scale solar and wind power, with many inflated claims of harm. The costs of solar and wind power do not come down by existing only in a niche market. Large projects provide the quantity of sales that enable scale up of production, which directly leads to lower unit costs in manufacturing. Requiring utilities to provide a set level of renewable energy supply, helps break the traditional mold of dirty power. We need large scale power supplies, and we need wind along with solar to provide power when solar does not. We need geothermal and wave, and biomass, as some power needs involve heat rather than just electricity. The problem we have now is that coal and nuclear power are damaging all life forms, not just a few thousands of acres. we cannot eliminate coal and nuclear without a replacement. Some areas will not be suitable for one type of renewable generation, so all clean energy systems have their place, as they are all location dependent.
We should utilize the existing spaces for solar when we can, and as a society it would be far better to offer incentives to individuals rather than corporations, in theory, but realistically, until we get bribery out of government, I don't see that happening yet. A person cannot pay for a multi- megawatt wind turbine unless they are very rich, as these machines cost millions of dollars each. We will need large groups or companies, or coops to buy large scale wind. Wind power in good resource areas is the lowest cost power, and has no emissions, no water use, and very little impact on the environment or wildlife. Many fossil fuel propaganda groups attempt to claim wind turbines are a major threat to bird and bats, but this is not born out by actual numbers.
No, I can't sanction hundreds of miles of grid (in the name of green energy) going through parks and wilderness. These are already beleaguered. I am open to offshore wind or solar farms, however.
I'm not sure that the contest is between fossil fuel companies and green companies. My understanding is that there is considerable overlap between the two in terms of ownership. Large oil companies like BP, Exxon, Shell or Chevron apparently are in the large-grid green energy business. Maybe these large companies can be made to switch from wilderness grids to relatively small grids in already degraded space, typically cities. But they would be sure to oppose such a concept .
I can also understand opposition to large wind turbines. They cast rotating shadows in yards and make disturbing noises. I don't know from personal experience how many birds and bats they kill, but that is not my only issue with big wind or big green energy in general.
For a thorough and convincing condemnation of wind turbines, by a Dutch engineer yet, please see
http://windenergy-the-truth.com/
Basically, I believe that the energy companies' enthusiasm for wind, solar, and bio-fuels is driven by the knowledge that they will never put fossil carbon out of business. France's nuclear powered EDF enabled them to NOT buy coal from Germany.
Solar power is great in places where the peak demand is for air conditioning, but when Southern California Edison claims that their new solar plant will be bigger than the whole of the USA's present solar capacity, it amounts to saying that there's not much hope for solar in Maine.
I have quite a lot of stuff about this at my website, at
http://skepticva.org/EnergyIndependence.html .
This nation is killing the Earth and every reason man breathes to help the climate? Deforestation of our terrestrial ecosystems heats up and dries out the climate.
"The loss of trees and plants in the planet's water cycle is critical to the advancement of climate change." NASA
Another failure in the wilderness-sited projects today, with costs in the "tens of millions of dollars" at the Genesis site west of Blythe - the whole place completely flooded and it destroyed most of what they had built so far. Because deserts are the WORST places to put gigantic industrial power plants!!! But as long as the billions of taxpayer dollars keep flowing towards these horrible Big Energy projects and flowing away from legitimate point of use solutions that are clean, non-deadly and democratically-owned, we will keep seeing the economy and the environment circling the drain.
There is a right way and a wrong way to do solar. You have to choose.
I am stunned at this biologist. Some of the best minds on ecology in this nation are biologists. The only way these alternatives are green is if they utilize them where people live, like on roofs, buildings, shopping centers and parking lots. Why kill the planet by killing ecosystems' living, life givng functions, cycles and services when they can be installed in cities and homes? And as you stated, ..."You need to get the power out of that area [ecosystems, the living body of Earth] via powerlines to feed into the grid..." Excellent point!
You mention an important one, Big Transmission (which spews SF6, the most damaging greenhouse gas!), but also is at risk from cyberhackers, line losses and weather/fire vulnerability. Then there is the enormous cost! A 120-mile power line through San Diego County recently took more than 7 years and cost $2.9 billion (including interconnection costs). Do you have any idea how much rooftop solar in San Diego could have been cranking into homes and businesses if that money had been spent on energy democracy instead??? crazy.
Big Energy is the problem, they will not be the solution. microgrids with PV, efficiency and improved storage solutions will be the inevitable future, it's just a question of how much wilderness we will let Chevron Solar and BP Wind kill for profits first - the government is ALL about it's Big Energy buddies!
IF our Economy was not servicing the Financial Sector, instead of the opposite and parasitic condition we presently have, THEN it would indeed be a no-brainer. Because we (U.S.) have foolishly allowed Wall Street et al outsized control of our fates, the transition is anything but assured. Unless more is done, the Europeans and Asians will leave the U.S. in the dust.
The big problem remains power density, you only get about a watt from each hand-palm-sized area.
Thankfully we have thousands of malls, each of which has enough roof area to supply about a MWpeak in electrical power. And the average garage/parking lot area happens to be enough to charge an electric car...
Not to mention that if you cover a single acre of a typical small farm with solar panels, those panels will produce way more energy than the rest of the farmland.
It's amazing how small a human palm really is, isn't it?
:-)
Can a solar panel or windmill release oxygen, balance the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, naturally take care of those greenhouse gases, naturally regulate and moderate the climate through plants and trees cooling cycle or transpiration; provide the vital nitrogen cycle and fresh water, clouds sheltering the Earth from the heat of the sun; provide pollination, decomposition, seed dispersal; 75% of all new medicines; 99% of all pest control of which agriculture would not exist and the control and checking of human disease pathogens that kill mankind?
Solar and wind are only earth-friendly when used on rooftops, buildings, parking lots and shopping centers, where people live, like they are accomplishing in Germany, but killing the planet to help the climate is insanity and human suicide.
Our Govt and its corp puppet masters seem possessed by demonic insanity, like a B horror movie, determined to destroy every inch of Mother Earth.