There is a hopeful report out this week that the cost of solar energy has dropped so dramatically that it is not cheaper than wind power in emerging markets like China and India. Indeed, Popular Mechanics is now calling solar energy the “cheapest energy” option. In Chile, electricity is being produced by solar power for $29.10 per megawatt hour–half the price of power produced by coal. These countries are seeing the benefits in the investment into alternative energy sources in both cost and the environment. The pledge of the Trump Administration to expand drilling and “clean coal” use runs against the trend in other countries.
Even if the Trump Administration is resisting climate change research, it can at least recognize the benefits of new technology in combatting pollution and reducing costs. There are jobs to be secured in this green industry and we are not serving our country well by resisting the technological and political movement toward solar and wind power. As the grandson of a coal miner, I am more concerned with getting jobs to West Virginia and Ohio and other states — not propping up industries that are declining. I am still hopeful that the business orientation of the new Administration will see the logic in not allowing these other nations to dominate this emerging market for green technology and alternative energy sources.
At this moment some countries have the market to compete against conventional energy with wind or solar power. We are getting on the right environmental friendly path. I want to write about this subject, but please check out informtomorrowtech blog for more information!
Link: https://informtomorrowtech.wordpress.com/
Solar energy is the future withouth a doubt. We only have to see how a country like China is boosting their generation power with megaprojects like the one they are building in Ningxia region.
Let me encourage you to read all the details of this project that will raise Ningxia as the biggest solar farm of the world:
https://velatianetworks.com/2017/01/16/ningxia-solar-project-6-million-panels-to-supply-the-asian-giant/
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/07/22/bill-gates-dismisses-solars-value-africa/
Bill Gates Again Dismisses Solar’s Value In Africa
July 22nd, 2016 by Joshua S Hill
Bill Gates, delivering the 14th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture on the eve of Mandela Day, has again dismissed the potential global role of solar, and in particular the value it could have in solving energy crises in Africa.
Bill_Gates“In the long run, what Africa needs is what the whole world needs: a breakthrough energy miracle that provides cheap, clean energy for everyone,” Gates said on the 17th. However, Gates doesn’t believe that that breakthrough has been made in the form of solar.
The article in Popular Science needs to be fact checked. However with that said I am in favor of solar as the price is coming down. Not sure that far down in price but I would surely like to see a study or two done on this alleged Chilean system. It must be concentrated solar. Here in the U.S. taxation and regulations are being used to stifle especially the smaller private energy innovations as the ruling class maintains their stronghold on centralized power production and distribution. People think the government agencies are really protecting the Citizens when they are really protecting big oil, gas, coal and government. All one has to do is see how much money is given in grants and contracts every year to the special interests and who the special interests are. It’s sometimes a nightmare trying to track them, but it can often be done. Sometimes you’ll run a lead and end up at this shell corp. with no substance or appearance of a working company. However, then you will find a company with 4,500 existing government contracts….what did they do…..consultants. We are all getting shafted by the ruling oligarchs in our society and they are the ones who control who gets what, as far as the contracts and grants. The major oil, gas and coal companies or their subsidiaries are the ones who most often get the majority of the public funding. It helps them lower their costs making it harder for the real alternative energies to compete. People just aren’t willing to dig deep enough into the quagmire to get to the truth, instead, relying on lame stream media outlets like PS. Oh yea, they were bought and pay for many years ago.
Joe,
Obama got his cabinet from a list that Citygroup provided him. His cabinet is still full of kleptocrats and if we are supposed to focus on what is, right now, that is the truth, right now. I agree that distraction is working well. People aren’t looking at the draconian “laws” this president and this Congress are passing right and left in the lame duck term.
In addition the Obama is fighting tooth and nail against the release of photos of torture committed by the US. Not to mention he is torturing in Gitmo and other black sites, now. Perhaps we will be at war with Russia because of his plans to earn another peace prize? No one hardly says a word about any of these things and that is dangerous.
I like the idea of stopping what is happening right now with Obama and this Congress. The other focus should be the acts of Trump and his advisors.
You are seriously delusional.
Of all the human-caused tragedies in the history of mankind, none has had more destructive impact on the visually stimulating landscape than the power-line blight that took root in the early 20th Century, then spreading like a cancer, infesting every population center from village to city, every country from first-world to third-world, every people of every ethnicity, no nook or cranny on the face of the earth immune. Not only power lines, but this same industry is largely responsible for the motivation behind the building of tens of thousands of dams on waterways across the face of the globe. What a child with crayons would do for the Mona Lisa, the energy industry has already done for the aesthetic- and environmental-destruction of the earth.
There is no industry on earth that I hate more than utilities with their ubiquitous power lines. So yeah, I’m all in favor of solar, so long as the utility cartels don’t monopolize solar by building huge solar-panel farms that would prolong the life of power lines.
In the same way that the personal computer had choked the mainframe-computer industry, home and factory solar panels (along with other alternative sources of energy) will do the same thing to the massive utility cartels that should have never been allowed to take root in the first place, especially given that technology had already existed to provide on-site power production for factories and homes. But Wall Street and stock markets diverted capital to utilities because there is no better stock than a monopoly’s stock that can pay a dividend day in and day out — for eternity. And there is no human motivation that cares less about beauty or the environment than investor greed.
Yes, I’ve read “The Monkey Wrench Gang” by Edward Abbey.