A Push To Solar

The government should make a big push to concentrate on solar energy. The presidential town hall debate featured Obama and Romney debating over oil, gas, and coal. As we have to come to learn, unsurprisingly climate change was not mentioned. President Obama did mention renewable energy production, but other than that solar energy references were non-existent. I think the reason Obama did not mention solar any further is because of Solyndra. Solyndra is a company that manufactured solar panels, which received loan guarantees because of Obama’s stimulus bill. This company recently went suddenly bankrupt. Solyndra went bankrupt because of Obama’s administration inability to properly handle subsidies. The technology that this green company was using was also a new, but the cost of its structure kept going up. Obama probably did not want Romney to bring this particular point up. I bring Solyndra up because although it is a shame that these people went bankrupt, but it looks like it will be better for the environment. Because this company shut down, solar panel manufacturing has moved to China, where it has now become a commodity and a high-volume industry, making the panels cheaper. Now that these panels are cheaper, more people will buy them making the atmosphere much cleaner.

Solar energy would be in perfect position to be competitive in today’s market if the subsidies weren’t so high for industries in oil, gas, and coal. In 2010, there was a $349 billion difference between renewable energy and fossil fuels. Cutting those subsidies would be good for the economy: it would reduce energy consumption, it would give solar power better standing to compete with fossil fuels, and it would give other renewable energies more chances as well. Between the other renewable energies, solar would still prevail because of its availability. Although only a small fraction of the sun’s light hits earth, that is 10,000 times as much energy than what we currently use. It is undeniable that solar energy has the best availability.

The only problem with solar energy is that the most usage of electricity occurs at night when there is no sun. But I think this could be an easy fix too. At high temperatures, solar energy can be stored in molten salts. These salts refers to salts in a liquid phase that is normally solid. This storage method is a good solution because salts are an effective method and are very cheap.

This solar theory is a very legitimate solution to give a massive decline in the progress of global warming. It would also save people like Calvin, and who doesn’t like Calvin?