Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
benefited from these loans, Solyndra is the only project that has failed by the spring of
2012.
King CONG is just plain wrong on solar. Solar adoption is practical, reliable, viable,
efficient, and affordable. And I'm going to tell you what CONG doesn't want you to
know.
The Adoption Curve
First let's tackle the misconception (which CONG wants to drill into you, so to speak)
that solar power isn't viable because it's been around for 50 years and has yet to be fully
embraced. The truth is, solar energy has caught on at a faster rate than most other energy
sources did. Other game-changing technologies have taken at least that long to be under-
stood for their true potential.
The steam engine, for instance, took more than a hundred years to be recognized as
the incredible resource that it is. Around 1690 the steam engine was used underground
to pump water out of mines—ironically, coal shafts in northern England that were below
the water table. After five decades people realized its value and put it to work above-
ground driving pistons for machinery in mills.
And then, a decade or more later, a clever chap named James Watt put it on wheels
to create a locomotive that was first used to haul coal out of mine shafts. (It's from this
use that we derive the word horsepower because, ever the creative marketer, Watt was
looking for a way to explain the potential of this engine, and he did so by relating it to
the amount of coal that a mule could drag out of a mine per hour.)
It wasn't until 1884 that an engineer by the name of Charles Parsons used his new
steam-turbine engine to drive an electrical generator.
A similar tale could be told of the automobile, which, while invented in the late nine-
teenth century, was not widely adopted as a form of transportation until after World War
II. As for the automobile's fuel system, it wasn't until 1964 that petroleum became the
major source of fuel in the United States—despite the first commercial oil well having
been drilled in the 1850s and all those fortunes made in the early 1900s.
History is accelerating in terms of how quickly technology can be commercialized,
but given the mind-blowing nature of solar we shouldn't be surprised that it's taking
some time for solar panels to become the dominant form of electricity generation on the
planet.
If solar power takes as long as petroleum (or oil) did, from discovery as a system of
energyusetomajorityshareofitsmarket,itcouldbedominantbythe2020s.We'reright
on track for that, but we'll likely get there sooner due to economic and environmental
imperatives for clean energy. King CONG's suppression of solar power's adoption goes
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