Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ar panels represent the biggest threat to the fossil-fuel industry and the biggest hope for
a carbon-free electricity industry.
It'ssurprisingwhatanexponentialcurvewilldo!Basedoncurrenttrends,solarpower
will be the salvation of our current nineteenth-century electricity grid and will consti-
tute the lion's share of energy for the coming generation. I reckon that solar power in the
United States will become more than a 10-gigawatt market by 2015 and jump to tens of
millions of homes or household equivalents by 2020. Since 1992, according to the UN
report “Keeping Track of Our Changing Environment,” the historic rate of solar growth
(30,000 percent) has actually exceeded that of Internet (29,000 percent) and cell phone
(23,000 percent) adoption, which is why I am confident that the true takeoff of the tech-
nology has only just begun.
4. Scalability
Although it can take five to seven years to build a gas or coal power plant in the United
States, and decades to build a nuclear plant, it takes only months to install gigawatts of
solar-powercapacity.In2010threetimesasmuchsolar-powercapacityasnuclear-power
capacity was installed worldwide. This was before the Fukushima disaster in Japan,
which has effectively iced the building and the financing of these dangerous plants. Coal
power plants are suffering a similar stigma because of the costs of pollution control as-
sociated with them. Large-scale solar still has some siting issues to contend with, but
the Legolike technology of solar is ultimately what makes it so scalable. Just look at a
solar-paneled rooftop, which gets power at the point of use, and you'll probably see why
it's better than building large central-station coal or nuclear power plants that come with
such cost and risk.
5. Access
Solar power is now easy and affordable for many people. The commodity nature of solar
panels has resulted in successful innovations in the business models that deliver energy
to the community. The most exciting uptake is occurring throughout the economically
developing world, where people don't have stable electricity supplies. New pay-as-you-
gosolar-powermodelshaveliberatedpeoplewithclean,affordablelightingandcharging
solutions. Now these people are empowered both figuratively and literally.
The most pressing opportunity for solar entrepreneurs is in the world's economically
challenged areas, where people are suffering from diesel fumes from generators they can
ill afford just to get scraps of electric light—or, worse, using dangerous kerosene for
fuelinsidetheirhomes—despitetheeconomicrealitythatsolarlightingischeaper.We'll
have to fight some dumb, negative energy polices to get electricity to these populations.
