Seven reasons to take the sun seriously
Life on this planet has run from solar energy for eons
Even though we live in the ‘sunshine state’ and those of us in south-east Queensland have recently witnessed the impacts of leaking oil tankers, there are some that still doubt the ability of the big ball in the sky to supply clean, efficient and cheap energy. Even though those doubts make as much sense as the tightly spun marketing term, ‘clean coal’.
Below is an excerpt from Ken Hickson’s popular ABC Carbon Express (Issue 62:13 - 19 June 2009).
He interviews Ausra’s founder and chief scientific officer David Mills. Ausra designs, manufactures, installs, and operates solar thermal energy systems for customers around the world.
When people ask David Mills why he got into the solar field, he puts it this way:
“Energy is a huge problem for humankind, with an obvious solution that beams down on us every day.
The obviousness is so complete that it can be shared by many different personalities:
- For the fastidious, solar is perfectly clean. No radiation waste dumps, oil tankers to pollute our coastlines, smog, or buried carbon dioxide ready to bubble up in an earthquake.
- For the economists, if they can be persuaded to add total benefits properly, solar is cheaper.
- For geeks, solar is high tech. The sun is an advanced fusion power system with the reactor at a safe distance. Think 10 square kilometre steam boilers, super sophisticated thin film PV, advanced computer control, high temperature materials science, and solar sailing space ships.
- For power engineers, solar power with 15 hours of storage is a much better match to human activity than their beloved ‘base load’. A square less than 100 km on a side would power the US electricity sector and a future electrified vehicle sector with greater than a 95 per cent correlation between supply and demand. Ditto China and India, and of course Australia.
- For ‘big number’ fetishists, solar is really huge. Caltech estimates that humans will only pull up a total — including all past mining — of 662 billion tons of coal out of the Earth. The thermal value of solar energy reaching the earth’s surface each year is 230 times larger than that. The sun also generates a smaller but still very large wind power resource.
- For the insecure, solar makes us safer. No nuclear technology to divert to bombs. No energy wars over oil. No struggles for water rights (via access to solar desalination). No additions to climate change. Just make sure you wear a hat at the beach.
- For the historians, life on this planet has run from solar energy for eons, and for futurists, solar is the key to ensuring that we and our biosphere have a satisfactory future relationship.”
Read more at the ABC Carbon website.
Related articles:
- And the winner is … clean coal
- Remove solar hot water from renewable energy target
- Green jobs are the key
- Queensland’s coal expansion
- Has the environment been sacrificed on the economic alter?
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