March 24nd 2002

The New Energy -Part 3-Solar power has great potential 

Author: Dallas News
Source:Dallas  News

Of course, the amount of sunlight that can reach any particular place
on the ground depends on many factors: cloud cover, latitude, time of
day and year. But you get the point. The sun's potential to supplant
traditional sources of energy that are both depletable and damaging to
the environment – coal, petroleum, nuclear fission – is enormous.

The United States is inadequately exploiting that
potential. It must change. It would be foolish not to.
For the sun is as free as the air and the rain. The cost
of converting its rays into electricity is rapidly falling.
The conversion produces no pollution. And it will be
around eons after the last fossil fuels have been used
up.

Certainly, solar power has far to go to establish itself
as a principal source of energy. In 2000, the United
States generated a mere two-hundredths of 1 percent
of its electricity from the sun. Fifty-two percent came from coal, 20
percent from nuclear fission, 16 percent from natural gas, 7 percent
from hydro, 3 percent from oil and 1 percent from wood. Approximately
1 percent came from biomass, geothermal and wind.

However, the picture is improving. The cost of the photovoltaic cells
has fallen 95 percent since the 1970s and is expected to fall a further
75 percent by the end of this decade. Last year, the amount of
electricity generated from the sun grew 40 percent.

Auctions to supply the
Sacramento Municipal Utility
District have yielded contracts to
reduce the delivered price of
solar electricity to 9 cents to 11
cents per kilowatt hour – not far
from the 6 cents to 7 cents per
kilowatt hour that U.S. consumers
pay for conventionally generated
electricity. Demand for
photovoltaic systems has tripled
in the last two years; more than
200,000 homes have them.

People's awareness of the
traditional energy sources'
environmental cost is growing.
The United States has coal to last 250 years. But
coal produces copious amounts of the gases
implicated in smog, acid rain and global warming,
and of the heavy metal mercury. Although "clean
coal" technology can remove high percentages of
the harmful gases, and President Bush proposes to
subsidize more such research, science is far from
finding practical ways to remove carbon dioxide,
the principal greenhouse gas. Furthermore, the
process of removing harmful gases and heavy
metals produces other toxic materials.

Nuclear energy is equally problematic. Although it
reduces U.S. dependence on fossil fuels, it produces
lethal radioactive wastes, which endure for tens of
thousands of years and which the country still has
no safe and permanent place to store (in spite of
the Bush administration's recent determination that
that place should be Nevada's Yucca Mountain).

While the United States has been paying
inadequate attention to solar power, other nations
haven't. Japan has led in the area, producing 128
megawatts of electricity from the sun in 2000, or
enough to power up to 128,000 homes. The United
States has more wealth, land area and sunlight
than Japan, but its market grew slower than
Japan's, and it produced just 75 megawatts. The
European Union also has moved aggressively; it
produced 61 megawatts in 2000, a 52 percent
increase over the previous year.

The difference appears to lie in the level of
government encouragement. Last year, Japan
subsidized rooftop solar systems to the tune of $210
million. Germany grants generous loan terms for
the systems' purchase, and when owners choose to
sell some of their electricity through the power
grid, it guarantees a high price. By contrast, the
Million Solar Roofs initiative launched by President
Bill Clinton in 1997 has languished because it has
not been backed by significant financial support.

Photovoltaic cells, once an oddity, are becoming
common. One sees them on pocket calculators,
school crossing signals, railroad switches and the
occasional rooftop. But the United States is just
beginning to mine its great potential. As it plots its
energy future, the country should look more toward
the sun.