Solar energy could ‘power the world’

The Press Association writes that Professor Harry Gray, founding director of the Beckman Institute at the California Institute of Technology, told attendants of the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans that “solar can potentially provide all the electricity and fuel we need to power the planet”.

Mr. Gray said that the way to achieve that we need to find out how “to use sunlight efficiently and directly to ‘split’ water into its elemental constituents – hydrogen and oxygen – and then use the hydrogen as a clean fuel.”

There are several challenges to be overcome: reducing costs to make solar competitive against non-renewable sources, developing cheap sollar cells without deterioration and using less toxic materials in the manufacture of these cells.

But with the sunlight that strikes the planet every hour being more than the energy consumed on the planet in one year, solar’s potential is truly enormous and demands to be pursued.

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Antonio Pasolini

London-based, Italo-Brazilian journalist and friend of the earth.

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1 Comment

  • I have almost 800 acres that would be a wonderful wind or solar farm by the coast. $24,500,000 is a good price for this land by the ocean. Just work for the good of the community; I am hopeful there is an individual out there that will install a wind, or solar farm.