GIVEN THE ONGOING energy crisis now afflicting California, it's clear that it's past time for our country and the world to give solar power more attention and achieve a cheap, renewable, nonpolluting solution to an otherwise intransigent problem. (See Time for Solar, Electronic News, Oct. 9, 2000.)
The Startlingly Positive Aspects of Solar Power
Generating electricity from sunlight using solar cells (called photovoltaics or PV) can be done in almost any size. PV can range from very small -- to power only a wristwatch or calculator -- up to very large -- to provide hundreds or thousands of kilowatts to power homes and businesses anywhere on Earth where the sun shines, while helping to prevent pollution of air, land and water.
It is an abundant, nonpolluting, renewable and reliable energy source with no radioactive discharge or waste material. Nothing is burned or consumed so there are no negative by-products created, unlike conventional energy sources such as oil, coal, gas and uranium.
This energy source is not affected by changes in international politics, trade or inflation at home.
It helps give us control over our energy supplies, meaning more independence and self-reliance. We don't have to get involved in offshore wars with unfriendly governments to secure this source of energy.
It cuts our utility bills. After the initial installation cost of the system, it provides essentially free energy.
The solar approach would eliminate the insecurity about future electrical price increases such as now being experienced in San Diego, and that will be elsewhere in California after additional deregulation on March 31, 2002, in areas served by Southern California Edison Corp. and Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
The use of electricity from sunlight conserves our dwindling quantities of nonrenewable energy such as natural gas and oil.
PV systems can be located where the electricity is needed and thereby avoid long transmission lines. (Distributed generation.)
For as far into the future as we can foresee, the sun will be warming and lighting the Earth and providing more natural and renewable energy than humankind could ever use.
So Why Isn't It More Widely Used?
The major reason is initial cost. Sticker shock. It means buying the electrical generating plant in order to have electricity and paying for 30 years of electricity up front. We're not used to doing that. We're used to paying for the kilowatt-hours that we use each month, not paying for 25 or 30 years' worth from the outset.
The PV industry has had to overcome resistance from all fronts including the banking and investment community, building and safety inspectors, roofers, electric utilities, and from the public itself, because most people know basically nothing about this technology.
In sum, it is hard to change the status quo when it involves major capital investment, a new infrastructure and a new way of thinking about and using electricity.
Yet it will happen as informed individuals find out they can roll the cost of a rooftop PV system into their mortgage and pay for it each month just like they do their electricity bill.
Others are increasingly turning to PV to help offset the greenhouse gases and other pollutants being poured into the atmosphere each and every day, year after year, from many sources, not least of which are conventional electrical generating plants that are the greatest stationary source of pollution in the nation.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced early in May 2000 that the U.S. electric power industry produced 1.1 billion pounds of toxic emissions in 1998.
That is enough toxic emissions to fill more than 2.1 million average U.S. homes. (Assumptions: 1lb. of greenhouse gases takes up 25 cubic feet; "average home" used here is 1,500 square feet with 8.5 foot-tall ceilings.) And remember, that is in just one year.
That announcement was the first-ever reporting of total toxic emissions from the electric power industry. According to the EPA, the power industry produces 15 percent of all U.S. toxic emissions.
An Incomplete Economic Model
Probably the most difficult opposing factor we must wrestle with is an economic model that does not include the true cost of conventional electricity production in what you and I pay each month for the kilowatt-hours we consume. (The same can be said for the price we pay at the pump for oil and gas consumption by our cars and trucks.)
In other words, the health-related costs to humans and wildlife, the environmental damage to rivers, lakes and streams, to the soil, to the very air we breathe and to the life-protecting ozone layer around the Earth itself -- these costs are not included in our monthly bills.
Why? Because capturing the exact numbers that should be associated with each of these aspects is difficult to do. So we go on polluting because it can't be proven in a court of law exactly who should pay how much. This is ludicrous and tragic at the same time.