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MIT Report Says Current Tech Enables Future Terawatt-Scale Solar Power Systems
Lucas123 writes: Even with today's inefficient wafer-based crystalline silicon photovoltaics, terawatt-scale solar power systems are coming down the pike, according to a 356-page report from MIT on the future of solar energy. Solar electricity generation is one of "very few low-carbon energy technologies" with the potential to grow to very large scale, the study states. In fact, solar resources dwarf current and projected future electricity demand. The report, however, also called out a lack of funds for R&D on newer solar technology, such as thin-film wafers that may be able to achieve lower costs in the long run. Even more pressing than the technology are state and federal policies that squelch solar deployment. For example, government subsidies to solar are dwarfed by subsidies to other energy sources, and trade policies have restricted PV module and other commodity product imports in order to aid domestic industry. Additionally, even though PV module and inverter costs are essentially identical in the United States and Germany, total U.S.residential system costs are substantially above those in Germany.
The marginal cost of oil extraction in the long run is pretty close to infinite. As a society that is the true marginal cost of current oil production. However, capitalism is woefully inefficient in this regard.
In terms of long term planning, whichever scalable renewable is/will be the cheapest is the winner.
Hint: That's solar. It may also be supplemented with tidal/wind/etc, but at the end of the day, solar will have to do the heavy lifting. That or fusion, but fusion has been 30 years away from viability for the past 50 years.
What really needs to happen is to remove all gov't subsidies across the board. Indeed this is what alt-energy maven Avory Lovins has been preaching for years, because he knows that without subsidies the fossil fuels can't compete with renewables. We are already near the tipping point where even the massive fossil fuel subsidies won't be enough to prop them up. The switch to renewables is just a matter of time. The only unknowns are how long it will take and how painful it will be.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Solar has also been "just around the corner" the last 30 years. It still needs to drop the price by almost 10x before it's economical as a partial alternative - and that's not even getting into storage. "Nest" and smart use needs to be here first, then partial micro solar deployment, then electric cars - that trifecta of electrical production, management, and storage is where the economics will finally start working.
PV = Watt?
FTTY
So what you're saying is, you're terrified of his ideas. You can't stand the thought of simply eliminating subsidies and letting the chips fall where they may.
What's the matter? If you're right, then fossil fuels remain more profitable than renewables and nothing changes.
If you still want to try to defend subsidies, all it means is that you're admitting that fossil fuels can no longer compete.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Well we spent 2 trillion dollars (and 4000 lives) to subsidize oil from 2000-2008 alone.
If we gave 2 trillion dollars to the solar industry, we'd have flying cars.
Military costs to protect oil field are ongoing and extremely expensive.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.