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09-12-2006 01:04 PM ET (US)
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Edited by author 09-12-2006 01:13 PM
Here's a thought.
If we could shift to a fuel economy based on hydrogen and electricity, derived from solar sources, wouldn't that be a great use for all those nasty deserts around the equator?
You could maybe do something productive in the shade as well.....
The world's energy consumption is about 12 Tera Watts at the moment and expected to double in 30 years.
Lets call it 30TW for fun
Sunlight falling on the ground at the equator is about 1kw per sq metre
Commercial solar cells are up to about 20% efficient (but rapidly getting better)
You'd need a solar farm of about 250 miles on a side to provide that amount of power.
That's it. The whole world.
Block 250 miles x 250 miles on the Sahara. Its tiny
OK, assume you'd get power about 25% of the time, so build four times as much farm and distribute it in smaller chunks around the globe.
That's still a total equal to a square 500 miles x 500 miles
You're still only talking about satisfying the world's energy needs from a total of, say, a hundred sites, each about 50 miles x 50 miles.
You may need the same area again for plant and solar collectors to process seawater by electrolysis, although I'm sure our chemist friends can suggest alternative reactions to produce hydrogen.
Use distributed gas storage and tank storage underground and above ground storage just like we do at the moment.
I'd submit that it was do-able to make a start NOW.
Hydrogen would be great for power generation and heating straight away.
Its trickier to run a car on hydrogen very well at the moment, but give fuel cells a while. In themeantime, there's industrial proceses thatcould also use solar power directly to catalytically combine hydrogen with, say CO2 or CO and produce methane or even longer chain molecules, all the way upp to synthetic oils, paraffins like diesel or alcohols like petrol.
You get low-cost power, shade in the desert, use for therwise barren land, sustainable power, huge development in relatively poor countries, with service needs that could be locallly provided.
Heck, you could even make the silicon for the cells from the desert sand itself!
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