Clean and sustainable energy is beginning to add jobs

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-3-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects.

And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 3 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today's post:

Clean and sustainable energy is beginning to add jobs

We need more jobs to put people to work and boost the economy.

The more jobs we add, the better off we are.

And, the more reliable, sustainable, clean, and efficient our energy production and use becomes, the stronger our economy will be and the more jobs there will be.

So the recent uptrend in new solar projects and new solar financing is very good news indeed!

We recently did a post or two on this uptrend. And, today on www.greentechmedia.com is an article on the recent uptrend in solar and solar financing.

The two GreenTech Media stories that caught my attention were:

1. A company called Prologis apparently is of massive size and owns warehouses throughout the United States. They now have the financing to put photovoltaic cells on every one of the roofs of their warehouses that it can be placed on.

Why is that so important?

If that project gets done successfully, it will add as much PV electricity as ALL the PV electricity we had in place in 2010. (I hope they do a phase 2 to put up solar canopies over all the parking lots involved.)

2. A story highlights that solar thermal power can store the heat it collects to generate electricity for hours after the sun goes down and to be able to match the electricty they send to the grid to the demand for it.

BrightSource Energy with its solar thermal tower design says the higher temperatures of its design can do this better than thermal solar trough design. That may or may not be true. And it's less likely to be true for doing better per dollar spent since the trough design is far cheaper and faster to deploy.

But this is great to see either way since it begins to make solar more capable of replacing electricity made by burning fossil fuels or from nuclear power.

A thermal solar plant in Spain has even provided 24 hour electricity during the summer and other times of year with lots of sun.

At some point, larger solar power locations will also add batteries to enable 24 hour electricity supply as needed to match demand on the grid. The technology to make this doable and cost effective is coming I believe.

Clearly this will likely happen first at solar thermal locations.