Saturday, December 29, 2007

Perhaps

Things are happening all over the world that will impact our future in unimaginable ways. Amazingly, they seem to be happening right here in the USA, even though we're usually too stupid, or too corrupt, to jump on them.

I told you about this one, but there's more.

America innovates and the rest of the world goes for the brass ring using our ponies. We come up with solar cells printed on cheap foil that can produce electricity at the same cost as coal and who figures out that this is a good idea?

Not America, with two corrupt oil men (is that redundant?) sitting in the Whitehouse doing nothing for their country, but Europe is ready and willing.

The holy grail of renewable energy came a step closer yesterday as
thousands of mass-produced wafer-thin solar cells printed on aluminium film
rolled off a production line in California, heralding what British scientists
called "a revolution" in generating electricity.

The solar panels produced by a Silicon Valley start-up company,
Nanosolar, are radically different from the kind that European consumers are
increasingly buying to generate power from their own roofs. Printed like a
newspaper directly on to aluminium foil, they are flexible, light and, if you
believe the company, expected to make it as cheap to produce electricity from
sunlight as from coal.


It's not hopeless though. We have some of those "liberal college students" who are kicking ass designing and building off the grid energy efficient homes and proselytizing their renewable heretic ways. How dare they make Big Electric obsolete!

For now the cost is excessive in these demonstration homes but they showcase the future and how we can eliminate oil and coal as dominant energy sources. It is a disruptive idea whose time should have been thirty years ago. Ask yourself this:

What power would Al Queda have if oil were only worth $12 a barrel even today?

Perhaps it is not too late.

Peace,
Steve

1 comment:

  1. what power would they have? nada. about damn time, i say.

    ReplyDelete