Columnist Robert Samuelson may feel he is caught in an energy conundrum, but the rest of the world is not. Samuelson’s recent column (Dec. 30) acknowledged fossil fuels are driving climate change, but concluded that we don’t have what it takes to fix it.
He’s wrong.
Samuelson got a lot right: that we must transition off of fossil fuels which are supplying four-fifths of humanity’s energy, and that pledges made at the Paris climate conference are not sufficient.
When he considers alternatives, he turns to nuclear and fossil fuel advocate Robert Bryce who argues that “only an expansion of nuclear power could replace significant volumes of fossil fuels” and that substituting renewable energy is a soothing fantasy because the “potential isn’t large enough.”
This myth is easily punctured with a simple fact: every five days the sun delivers to the surface of the earth the energy equivalent of all the fossil fuel reserves in the world. University of California economist Stephen J. DeCanio says that solar power is the only non-fossil fuel energy source big enough to meet future world energy needs in an environmentally benign way.
But don’t we need a technological breakthrough to exploit this vast resource? Actually, that came 60 years ago, when researchers at Bell Labs produced the first silicon solar cells. The last few decades have been spent improving their efficiency and lowering their manufacturing costs so that today solar panels compete directly with conventional electricity sources. My cousin, an admitted climate skeptic, installed photo-voltaic panels not to save the environment, but simply to save money on his electricity bill.
Combine solar panels with wind turbines and hydropower, which have even lower costs, and we can build an energy system that emits no carbon dioxide, no air or water pollution, and no radioactive waste. Over time, these can completely replace fossil fuels.
But don’t take my word for it. Stanford professor Mark Jacobson and his team have put together detailed plans for building this energy future. They show how each U.S. state can use its own particular renewable energy sources to meet 100 percent of the state’s energy needs by 2050.
To be sure, this is a massive undertaking. Fortunately, the solar resource does not have to be filtered through governments or giant energy corporations, but is available to anyone that can install solar panels or join a community solar garden.
As more people discover the positive economics of installing solar PV, the word spreads, driving solar to grow exponentially. Continue high growth rates for several decades, and we will arrive at a clean solar-powered future. And since the solar resource does not run out, this could be the last energy transition we ever need to make.
Robert Arthur Stayton, Santa Cruz, Calif.
Editor’s note: Stayton is the author of the award-winning book “Power Shift: From Fossil Energy to Dynamic Solar Power.”
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