Raymond Kurzweil: “Solar Power to Rule in 20 Years”
Posted February 20th, 2008 by Alex IonWe may not need futurist and inventor Raymond Kurzweil to tell us that solar energy is going to rule in 20 years or the fact that nanotechnology could give global warming a big chill (pdf link), but it’s always a good thing to be reassured. He is one of the distinguished futurists that predicted the demise of the Soviet Union and foresaw the explosive growth of the Internet and wireless systems.
Getting back to solar energy, Kurzweil said that we already have 10,000 times more sunlight than we would need to convert into electricity and serve the whole world. However, 1% of total energy we use comes from sunlight and wind. He also stated that we may be 5 years away from the point where solar power becomes efficient and competitive to fight fossil fuels.
“We also see an exponential progression in the use of solar energy,” he said. “It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we’ll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.”
A bright future
The technology is going to develop and becoming efficient is similar to using nano-engineered materials for solar panels which not only makes them lighter but also easier to install. This is something Google likes and invested in it ever since the technology was developed.
Other technologies that will bring solar power mainstream are solar concentrators made of parabolic mirrors that would collect solar energy from a very large area and sends it to a small collector or a small but efficient steam turbine.
“You could, for example, create hydrogen or hydrogen-based fuels from the energy produced by solar panels and then use that to create fuel for fuel cells, he said. There are already nano-engineered fuel cells, microscopic in size, that can be scaled up to store huge quantities of energy”, Kurzweil said.
Knowing Raymond Kurzweil’s history as a futurist, we can only be happy that the technology is on the right track to “rule” in 20 years. If you trust him and would like to know more on what is going to happen you can read his predictions : The Age of Intelligent Machines(from 1990), The Age of Spiritual Machines (from 1999) and The Singularity is Near (from 2005).
photo by Jan Egil Kristiansen
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February 21st, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I have read that you could cover the sahara in solar panels and power the EU. Why don’t we? If we’ve got to pay someone for energy then having a backup to Russia’s dominance would be nice.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:48 am
I ask myself: why did we go to Iraq when we had the opportunity to use Sun as energy? Maybe it’s because sun as energy is like nuclear fusion, it’s 40 years that we are near to use that…very near..allmost done, but not really now..
Oil will prevail against sun and wind because you can not sell sun and wind, but you can sell oil.
February 25th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Todos los que están trabajando en energías renovables sabemos que ninguno de los tipos de energía va a reemplzar toda la producción de energía eléctrica de un país. Realmente es ridículo tener 100% de la necesidad abastecida solamente por un sólo tipo de fuente.
Todas ellas se complementan, y así debería ser. Se evita monopolios, y desgracias.
July 26th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Solar power is rapidly becoming a major piece in the energy puzzle, especially now with ‘Flow Batteries’ for night time and cloudy time power. Nuclear power is irreplaceable for ships and subs. We must conserve it for these purposes. The remaining oil has irreplaceable applications and must be allocated for them. Coal exploitation is still at the primitive, ‘You burn it for heat’ stage, Come on, biology, chemistry and physics, modernize this wonder-fuel into something we can use safely! Wind is about to be revealed to the American people by the last great energy prophet, T. Boone Pickens. Using his genius, we will be able to adapt to using much less oil in a very comfortable manner. The South Western U.S. is currently being bought up by those ‘in the know’ financial people, and solar power is a modern reality, and our power grids are growing to accommodate this huge free resource. Good news for us! Bad news for the oil barons! We will kick their asses good, they will never hi-jack another prosperous American economy. We don’t need to fight their (The Saudis) dirty Suni war either. We can survive very well on the oil we pump from our own lands. We have seen the light, we have developed the technology and we are about to elect the government that will, in spite of the oil barons lobby, implement an America free from parasite oil nations.
August 2nd, 2008 at 8:03 pm
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