As the government of Saskatchewan is only barely discussing the future of renewable energy like wind and solar, much of the world has already left the starting blocks of a race to switch the worlds energy supply from the dirty oil, coal and nuclear to the ultimate source of all energy on the planet, the sun.

To put this into context, there is enough energy hitting the earth from the sun in one hour to provide all of the energy for society for an entire year.

So, we have a number of options to get out of the dirty business of fossil fuels.  The options today include photovoltaic, thermal solar, solar lamps, solar pumps, wind power, biomass and hydro.  Before this, we need to begin with energy conservation or energy demand side management.  For reference, Saskatchewan uses about 3,000 MW of electrical energy.

In Germany, we have already heard that they are building 4,000 megawatts of solar power generation.  Spain has 600 megawatts of solar capacity already.   Recently, a consortium of 12 companies known as the Desertec Industrial Initiative is planning to build a solar power plant in the Sahara Desert.  It is their intention to deliver this solar power to Europe as early as 2015 and would eventually supply 15% of Europe's energy needs through this system.

Similarly, there is the same potential to build large solar power plants in India, near Rajasthan.  But this type of technology does not have to be built in large plants.  It can be built at the farm or village level.  It has a vast list of benefits, first of all limiting the demand for the ever scarcer supply of oil and natural gas.  It doesn't create any waste, especially any toxic and deadly waste like nuclear energy.  It doesn't destroy and scar the landscape like coal or tar sands strip mining.  It can be scaled up to any level, whether a simple 30 MW system for a home or small village up to the sizes being suggested in the United States.

So, how does it work?  You essentially have a curved set of sun-tracking mirrors calledheliostats that focus the sun's energy to a central receiver.  Within this central receiver, a solution of liquid salt is circulated through tubes absorbing the heat energy gathered from the sun.  This heat is circulated into an insulated tank where the heat is transfered to a boiler system that boils water to steam which drives a conventional steam turbine.  After the heat is transfered, the cooled salt mixture is recirculated up into the central receiver to be reheated again.

And the cost is competitive.  You can get the same heat as oil at a price of $50-$60 a barrel of oil.  And as these systems get more mainstream, the price will inevitably go down.  But what makes anything using solar energy most attractive is the fact that the source of the energy travels to your home or village, free of charge.  You don't have expensive pipelines or tanker ports.  You don't have expensive refineries that are prone to terrorist attacks.

So while the Saskatchewan, Alberta and federal government go maddly building more tar sands plants, more oil and gas wells, more exploration in tar sands in northern Saskatchewan and more recently the high Arctic, many countries across the globe are building domestic energy systems that will hopefully in time make fossil fuels obsolete, thereby reducing the source of climate change into a thing of the past.  Hopefully the world smartens up soon and realizes that we have the solution at hand.

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