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Solar energy to replace 69% of US power supply by 2050

solar energy 69

With a steadily increasing number of organizations taking up projects to promote the use of solar energy, the sun-generated energy could supply 69 percent of US power by 2050. Nope, that’s not wishful thinking. Experts are positive that this is exactly what we can look forward to.

In an article by Ken Zweibel, James Mason, and Vasilis Fthenakis in Scientific American, dated January 2008, they talk about a large-scale project to harness the solar energy resources of the USA Southwest between now and the year 2050. They propagate that solar energy would widely replace coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power to constitute 69 percent of US electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050.

And how is it hoped to be brought about? The perpetrators have well-chalked out plans for that. To begin with, a vast area of photovoltaic cells will be erected. Excess daytime energy would be stored as compressed air in underground caverns, to be tapped during night hours by running the compressed air through turbines. Large solar concentrator power plants would be built as well. This would require for a large new direct-current power transmission ‘backbone’ to be constructed in order to deliver the solar electricity across the USA.

But, doesn’t this set-up require a neat sum? You bet it does — $420 billion dollars in subsidies from 2011 to 2020 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost competitive! After 2020, the solar technologies would compete on their own merits. The present 10-square-miles would expand to 16,000-square-miles by the project’s end.

Wow, it definitely sounds ambitious! We can only hope that it works out fine. We know we need it, the world needs it, the environment needs it.

Source: Gather

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