Issue Briefs
Solar Energy
What the Heck Should We Do with It?Much has been said about direct solar energy and its offspring in winds, waves, falling water and biomass that distributes its energy in readily available forms to most regions of the world. However, little focus has been placed on how solar energy can best meet the needs of prosperity, humanity, the environment and energy security.
The short term answer is simple: Today solar energy can best serve humankind by replacing the gasoline and diesel fuel that powers the internal combustion engines now in operation worldwide; all 800 million of them, as quickly as possible. These engines are the largest users and wasters of oil and they spew out health hampering pollutants and earth damaging global warming gasses by the megaton. Their emissions make people and our planet sick----sometimes fatally. It's time to change that and opt for real, clean, energy security.
Solar energy is the only energy source available on earth that is abundant enough to replace oil permanently; and it makes no sense to go for temporary solutions. For instance, the International Energy Agency says it will cost US $3 Trillion to meet the growth in energy demand from depletable energy through 2030; then what? The estimated cost of a renewable hydrogen infrastructure: US $600 Billion; not trillion----and it would be permanent.
Each day earth receives more solar energy than all the energy that was ever contained in all the oil ever produced (14.7 x 10 18 BTU) . Nature delivers vast amounts of this energy in wind, waves, and biomass and distributes high concentrations of direct solar energy across the sun-scorched deserts of the world. Each of these abundant energy resources presents an opportunity to tap high volumes of clean energy using safe, non-polluting technology. Harvesting less than one fifteenth of one percent of this daily availability of energy and converting it to hydrogen fuel could replace the 30.6 billion barrels (1.3 Trillion gallons or 4.9 Trillion liters) of annual oil consumption.
The world economy is oil dependent and its infrastructure is resistant to change. "Peak Oil" shrinks the ability of oil to meet the growing demand needed to power the world economy that supports Earth's 6.4 billion people. Earth's abundance of solar energy can make a major contribution towards conserving and replacing oil faster than "Peak Oil" can limit oil supplies, but only if its output is focused on this goal. So put some sunlight in your tank. How?
The task of putting sunlight in our tanks gets easier once it becomes the goal of energy policies. These policies can encourage commercialization of "Transition Technologies" that make using all sources of solar energy in gasoline and diesel engines convenient and efficient. These policies can also designate oil's preferred replacement fuel and focus resources on its production from solar energy as well as its transportation and distribution.
"Renewable Hydrogen" can be made economically and in high volumes from all renewable energy resources and therefore can focus solar energy's abundant output on producing clean burning motor fuel. Renewable Hydrogen burns clean emitting only water and the "Transition Technologies" to allow gasoline and diesel powered engines to cleanly burn "Renewable Hydrogen" or an engine's design fuel at increased efficiency levels are available. The Transition Technologies" needed to make, move, and distribute hydrogen fuel are also available for commercialization.
"Renewable Hydrogen" fuel can clean the air and water, reduce global warming gasses and pollution related diseases. Further, relying less on oil would reduce international tensions and petrodollar flows to the Middle East, a portion of which go to supporting war and violence. But the policies to make a brighter energy future and real energy security are not in place.
Big oil and energy are the competition to solar derived fuel; they will not do the job for us. We must take back our energy future and encourage our elected officials to support legislation based on the Four Principles set out in the Declaration of World Energy Security and Independence.
So please sign the Declaration and start us on the way to energy security and a bright and peaceful future. [click here to see Four Principles and sign declaration.]
Thanks and best wishes, Bill and Roy