Skip to main content

Why the only future is a green future

Now there is little doubt in the world of rational people that climate change is real, and it's already happening. Yet many people are still opposed to wind farms or solar farms or really any other green source of energy. 

 Now there used to be a very valid reason why many of these technologies haven't been adopted, and that was price. As these technologies were very new a decade ago, they were incredibly expensive and not very efficient. However, things have come along dramatically since then, and as these technologies begin to mature it makes more and more economic sense to start using them more and more. 
This is only really here because it looked cool :)

With numbers like 65% growth in solar power over 5 years, US solar costs at 97% less than in 1975 and the recent news that solar power is now the same price as conventional energy in Germany, Italy, Portugal, Australia and Spain, clearly solar is the current golden boy of the green revolution. The best indication of this is the response of some utility companies. The best case study of which is Arizona, which has seen household solar power increase from 4770 to 14524 in 2 years. As households in Arizona are becoming increasing less reliant on the grid, the utility companies have started to wage a war of propaganda over household solar and have spent nearly $4 million in advertising in 2012. This is an indication of how worried energy companies are about the very real possibility of them becoming completely obsolete! With prices falling and numbers growing, it isn't hard to see why. 

This graph shows just how rapidly solar power is coming down in price, and forecasts that this will continue to drop over the rest of this decade
This is then compounded with the ability to store this solar power for a cloudy day (as a brit that is very important!) and also the numerous other green technologies that are making it easier and easier to go green. This is compounded by the fact that traditional energy sources are becoming more and more expensive and risky and constant news that energy companies aren't playing fairly. 

 It is highly likely that green tech (particularly solar) will go the way of the mobile phone, the internet and computers; from obscurity to ubiquity in a matter of decades. With the prices constantly improving, green energy is becoming not only the better moral choice but also the better economic choice.

 Sources

 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fight-over-rooftop-solar-forecasts-a-bright-future-for-cleaner-energy/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/03/25/grid-parity-why-electric-utilities-should-struggle-to-sleep-at-night/
http://blog.comparemysolar.co.uk/10-year-forecast-of-solar-panel-prices/
http://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_granholm_a_clean_energy_proposal_race_to_the_top
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Medical Writing: Do you need a PhD?

When I was looking into becoming a medical writer, I was just at the end of my MSc and trying to decide whether to try and get a job in medical communications or to do a PhD and then move into Med Comms later. The short answer is no you don't necessarily need  a PhD to be a medical writer, but some employers think you do and it certainly seems to be the ideal.  After looking around on the internet I found a few forum posts asking about the same thing, "should I do a PhD to get into Med Comms?”. Most people said no not necessarily. But as far as I could tell, all of them did have PhD’s and were just telling people well maybe yes and maybe no. Since getting a job as an associate medical writer without a PhD, I've heard a lot more of this conversation occurring within the industry and especially at careers fairs. A lot of people  do  have PhD’s and quite often post-doctoral experience. But that is normally because they started out in academia and...
17 comments
Read more

A Moment of Clarity for Solar Power

There's something about solar energy that I just find fascinating. Maybe it's the because it could be our saviour and the key to practically endless free energy, or it could be that it's the mission to mimic one of life's most complex and fundamental biological processes (photosynthesis). Whatever it is, it's got me hooked!  That said, I am no physicist and I do not pretend to be one! What I am, though, is someone who is very interested in watching the technical advances in solar technology and who takes pleasure in telling the story of solar energy.  This article sparked from a conversation with one of my housemates about solar energy. We talked about  how solar energy could power california 5 times over without using up any additional space  and then went onto  the possibility of "paint-on solar power" . Then we got to talking about how cool it would be if we could have transparent solar cells, so you could replace your windows with "solar w...
2 comments
Read more

Using ChatGPT for Data Visualisation: Antarctic Sea Ice through the years

In the last 12 months ChatGPT has been established as the go-to generative AI solution for the mainstream, with over 1 billion monthly active users, it's no surprise everyone is talking about the impact of ChatGPT on the future of humanity. I am one of those billion users, and I have been using it multiple times each week for the last year, exploring its utility and trying to identify some of the pitfalls.  The premium membership, ChatGPT plus, has gone through several different guises, but recently the ways of interacting with the advanced features of GPT-4 have been greatly streamlined through the addition of custom GPTs, the GPT store and the integration of image generation, code interpreter and bing search all within a single chat.  So, with that greatly streamlined approach I wanted to re-run a little task I gave ChatGPT several months ago, to see how much of an improvement had been made. The task was based on a weekly challenge from the data visualisation community, Work...
Post a Comment
Read more