“The human race must finally utilise direct sun power or revert to barbarism,”
- Frank Shuman, 1914
In the past five years the renewable electricity sector has grown rapidly and now provides 20% of the world’s power generation. Many UK consumers are beginning to get on board with this development – installing PV panels on their rooftops to take advantage of solar power. As green energy becomes more of a reality – solar power and electricity become increasingly viable to several countries, not only on a consumer-by-consumer basis, but as one of the primary solutions for all of their current and future energy needs.
Targets are currently being set in many developing and developed countries. Bangladesh, for example, aims to meet 10% of the total power demands for its 150 million citizens through the use of solar energy by 2020. So far 870,000 citizens have benefitted from a program funded by the World Bank, which focuses on the installation of solar powered light systems.
Bangladesh isn’t the only country investing in solar energy; German particle physicist Gerhard Knies – a solar enthusiast who bluntly stated “we are really, as a species, so stupid” not to make better use of the sun as a resource for energy.
In 1986 Knies discovered that over a period of only six hours the world’s deserts receive more energy from the sun than humans consume in a year. This calculation in mind, Knies hypothesised that if even the smallest fraction of this mass of energy could be harnessed; an area of the Sahara desert equivalent to size of Wales could effectively power the whole of Europe.
Knies’ passion for solar energy questioned the possibility of the human race evolving past dirty and dangerous fuels forever – his answer took the form of a project called ‘Desertec’, and will be discussed in the continuation of this blog post.
Stay tuned to learn more about this exciting and ambitious project.
