The Sun’s the Limit!

Welcome back!

Today we’ll scratch the surface of energy econometrics as it applies to solar energy production. When discussing the energy transition from fossil fuels to carbon-free renewables, we must analyze the theoretical potential, as well as technical and economic feasibility of developing and “scaling up” these technologies to make them suitable for the world’s largest, energy-consuming economies.

I highly recommend reading this comprehensive module on the renewable energy transition from Boston University: https://www.bu.edu/eci/files/2019/06/RenewableEnergyEcon.pdf.

            Theoretical potential refers to how much energy is available hypothetically. For example, the sun generates a whopping 3.9x10^26 watts of power, which dwarfs the world’s 16x10^12 watts (aka 16 terawatts) of power consumption (https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/properties-of-sunlight/the-sun). Put another way, those watts, if converted to mass, equate to 4,000,000 tons of energy every second, and the world currently only captures and converts 44 pounds of sun energy into usable energy per day (https://www.gocamsolar.com/blog/how-much-energy-does-sun-generate). Theoretically, the sun provides the world with enough energy for a year every single day.

Unfortunately, only a small amount of this energy can actually be captured and converted. Up to 50% of the sun’s energy is scattered by dust and clouds in the atmosphere, and doesn’t reach Earth’s surface. Accounting for absorption and scattering, 1.08x10^8 GW (1.08x10^17 watts) of power reach Earth’s surface, which is still 7,000-8,000 times the amount of annual global energy consumption (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/solar-energy).

Solar potential is further hindered due to variable weather conditions, the limited number of solar panels we can actually build, and the limited ways in which we can store solar energy (batteries, ponds) for use at night. The southwestern United States, northern Africa, and the Middle East are especially good locations for solar plants because they are arid and cloud-free for most of the year, but this limited geographic extent isn’t large enough to power the planet. We are also materially limited and don’t have enough rare earth elements, minerals, and metals to build enough panels to rely 100% on solar power. The technical feasibility is therefore greatly reduced by our geography and material needs.

Now, we luckily don't have to reach 100% of our solar potential. We can have a mixed-source electrical grid using wind, tidal, and geothermal energy. We can also maximize our hydropower by adding generators at existing dams without building new dams. There also remains the solution of recycling our electronic waste and recovering more minerals and metals from our thrown-out phones, computers, and machines. Recycling our e-waste would help make our economy more of a closed-loop system, where we no longer need to mine fresh materials for solar panels, but can strip them from pre-existing consumer goods. This would reduce pollution and leaching from e-waste as well as reduce energy consumption.

Then there’s the economic feasibility of solar power. Frankly, we have more than enough money to make renewable energy cheaper and more profitable. Gas is literally publicly funded. Global fossil fuel subsidies were $4.7 trillion in 2015 and $5.3 trillion in 2017 (https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies). I cannot overemphasize how MASSIVE a trillion is. “A stack of one billion dollar bills would be 67.9 miles high. A trillion dollar bills would reach 67,866 miles into space,” (https://exhibitcitynews.com/how-big-is-one-trillion-dollars/). If we took some of those trillions of dollars away from fossil fuel companies and gave them to renewable companies, we could easily make renewables the cheaper, more attractive consumer option.

As a closing thought, a long-time commenter mentioned that solar panels are currently being manufactured in the Uyghur Muslim concentration camps in the Xinjiang province of China. I do not condone these human rights violations and have, for the entirety of my professional life, insisted that America responsibly source our energy technologies and consumer goods while recycling our waste. Manufacturing our own panels would bring many jobs back to our shores. If you’d like to read about how America, the country that first developed solar technology, lost the solar advantage and allowed development and manufacturing to move overseas, I recommend reading this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/06/why-the-us-doesnt-really-make-solar-panels-anymore-industrial-policy/619213/.

We have the technology to rebuild our grid.

We have the money.

Now, we need action. We need vision and bravery.