Greenpeace report proves solar power available to 100 million people...

[jpak]

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/greenpeace-report-proves-solar

Greenpeace report proves solar power available to 100 million people by 2025 07 October 2005

Cairo, Egypt — The solar thermal power industry could be worth 16.4 billion Euros and create 54,000 jobs worldwide by 2025, according to a report launched today in Egypt by Greenpeace, the European Solar Thermal Power Industry Association (ESTIA) and IEA SolarPaces.

The report, "Concentrated Solar Thermal Power - Now", is a practical blueprint, which proves that in two decades solar thermal power could supply clean electricity to more than 100 million people living in the sunniest parts of the world (1).

Greenpeace and ESTIA are encouraging politicians and policymakers to support this new sustainable industry by taking the necessary steps laid out in the report, which provides a detailed action plan for Governments who want to invest in this new technology. It also illustrates how the Middle East and North Africa could become the main centre for solar power with the potential of also exporting electricity to Europe (2).

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[NNadir]

1. It's real easy to make predictions about 2025.

Many of the people who call you on it will be dead, some undoubtedly from global climate changed induced disaster.

The 100 million people, less than 2% of the world's population at that time, will all be the richest citizens no doubt. That should satisfy greenpeace, which is after all a club for those in need of specious "do-gooder" amusement, but it offers next to zero for the rest of the planet and it will do next to zero on the subject of global climate change. (It is also a club for luddites who are especially ignorant of science, especially physics, but that is another matter.)

If solar power was really as great as advertised, there would be no need for hype and promises. There would be an industry producing a significant portion of the world's energy needs. I mean, what's more popular with people than solar energy? People are always saying how they love it! It's very, very, very popular.

The fact that the production of industrial and residential energy through solar means is actually still pathetic suggests that something is rotten in Denmark, Denmark being a country that buys it's electricity from France when the wind isn't blowing.

Talk is talk. Promises are promises. But as anyone who has held a real job knows, the most important parameters are performance, as in delivery.

The solar crowd has been talking for 40 years about what it is going to do in ten or twenty years. Ten or twenty years pass and they are still talking about what they are going to do in ten or twenty years with no reference whatsoever to the promises of twenty years before. The statement is no better than a claim that Jesus will come in twenty years.

[philb]

2. solar concentrator systems are cost effective "now" in areas with

lots of sun- such as western U.S.

But solar hot water and swimming pool heaters are cost effective most everywhere; and solar PV in many places remote from power lines.

And there are huge amounts of energy efficiency technology and measures that are cost effective. It would be more cost effective to purchase energy efficiency technology than power plants in most areas for several years, due to the much lower cost of efficiency compared to new facilities; in addition to the other benefits of efficiency improvedments such as reduction of trade deficit; national debt; enhancement of economic development,etc.

For documentation on cost effective energy efficiency technology and measures see http://www.rmi.org

[NickB79]

3. Does this sound funny to anyone else?

How do you "prove" something "might" happen 20 yrs in the future?