Solar Plenty

An article in ScienceDaily reports on new research concluding that enough solar power generation could be installed in California to supply three to five times the state's energy needs.

This is not exactly a surprise.

I have followed the development of alternative energy sources for several years now.  Previous research has shown that wind power alone is enough to supply the energy needs of the entire United States.

Of course, the sun does not always shine and the winds do not always blow.  But that's only an engineering concern. We know how to make batteries. Ongoing research continues to make them cheaper and last longer.

So, if the United States truly wants energy independence from foreign oil, what's stopping us?

A wonderful management exercise is for a company's leaders to ask themselves the question, not of what business they are in, but what business it would be profitable for them to think that they are in. Eventually, oil companies will wise up and figure out that it would be best for them to think that they are in the energy business, rather than the oil business. I have heard that some of them are already moving in that direction.

Oil companies that insist on remaining oil companies will soon become dinosaurs. By contrast, those that invade the burgeoning alternative energy sector can be big winners.

That said, there is one teensy thing about solar and wind energy that has bothered me: To the best of my knowledge, nobody has yet done any research to pin down the consequences of using these energy sources.

Think about it: If you put up a wind generator on the plains of Texas, you extract energy from the wind flow. That means that, in one tiny location, the wind is flowing differently than it would flow if you had not taken some of the energy from it.  Now repeat that a million times, with wind generators spread across the continent. What is the consequence of the resulting change in the flow of air over the earth's surface?

If you put up solar generating facilities, whether home rooftop units or gigantic industrial facilities, you extract some energy that would otherwise contribute to warming the earth's surface at that location. You then transmit that energy over wires to other places where some of it will be used to power our devices and the rest will be released as heat. What is the consequence of changing the flow of heat on the earth's surface?

I hate to say it, but there is every possibility that this generation of alternative energy proponents, motivated by the need to combat global warming, may someday be succeeded by a new generation who blame us for the destruction of their environment because we failed to look at the consequences of the solutions that we implemented.

Somebody needs to look into this.