Looking at the capability of the world being powered from solar or wind

The sun sends 470 exajoules of energy to the earth every 88 minutes. This is how much energy the earth uses each year. If we captured just 1% of the sun’s energy this would still give a 6 times more electricity than we need. 

In a similar vein, if wind turbines collected just 20% of the wind energy on earth this would be 8 times what the entire world uses each year.

In terms of area, to generate all the power that the earth needs (using current efficiency) we would need roughly 1 million square km or about 11% of the Sahara desert. Obviously, this is an oversimplification, but it shows that the world is more than capable of running on clean energy.

The energy is there to be used, we just need to undertake it at speed. Vested interests in fossil fuel companies have fought aggressively against this move for decades. Their time must be over, the world can and must clean up its act.

UK Government realises theft of excess power is not good policy

I wrote a few months ago about a move that the UK government had made to reduce the amount paid to solar panel owners for the excess power fed back into the grid to zero. This was an odd move, to suggest that multi-million pound energy suppliers should get energy for free from people off the street who have managed to afford some solar panels seems bizarre. The idea that the reward for doing the right thing on the environment was to give your energy supplier large amounts of electricity but actually then still have to pay them for any used outside sunlight hours and not be paid a penny for the large amount that you give them while you’re out at work was odd.

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