Follow the Sun

All right; this isn't actually a post about the Green Conference; it's more of a follow-up. But sometimes that's the way it goes for a blogger; you're all set to start blogging away about some nice event you attended last Friday and up pops a news story that ties directly into your subject matter, and off you go...

There's a speculative piece on the MSN Money pages about solar power, and how more large companies are becoming interested in this most renewable of resources. It seems that J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo are teaming up to produce solar power plants; Chevron and Google are funding research and seeking to acquire the smaller players in the field; even investment bankers are getting into the act, buying up windy land for wind turbine farms and sunny land for solar plants...

For decades the primary barrier to solar power as a viable means of producing power commercially, at least from a business standpoint, has been the cost of building the power plants. Simple thermal systems, like the solar hot-water heater systems common in Southern California, are relatively easy (and cheap) to construct, but using solar thermal systems to heat steam and power turbines has never paid off, and the photoelectric cells needed to convert sunlight directly into electricity have been expensive and inefficient. The technology isn't new (it's been around since at least the 1960s), but it serves no purpose to generate a kilowatt-hour for $1 using solar power when the local power company can generate the same amount of electricity with 25 cents worth of oil (or a penny's worth of coal)...

With the price of oil doubling and re-doubling over the past few years, the economics of the situation are changing. As the cost of fossil fuels rises, the cost of solar power is becoming more competitive, and the idea of having a power plant that doesn't require expensive fuel (even if it cost more to build) is becoming more attractive. If the demand for oil continues to rise at a geometric rate while the supply rises only at an arithmetic rate (or even begins to decline), then solar, wind and geothermal energy may eventually become more cost effective than the older power generation systems. And if that happens, all of the same companies are going to want have controlling interests in these new sources of billable, consumer electricity...

Of course, there are other new technologies coming that will probably compete with solar power plants. Hydrogen fuel-cell technology has been around almost as long as the photo-electric solar power systems, and the folks at American Honda tell me they are only a year or two away from releasing the first fuel-cell powered cars for use in North America; they say they've also got the "gas station" problem worked out, although they won't tell me what the solution they've come up with is, or when they're going to start setting up locations where you can buy the hydrogen as fuel. At the same time, they're also working on several "clean coal" technologies (which might make an excellent stop-gap until the truly "renewable" power sources are ready), including one that would produce a liquid fuel that you could use to power cars...

Needless to say, none of these companies are working on any these ideas out of the goodness of their little black corporate hearts; they want to become the next OPEC (or at least the next Standard Oil) and rake in the same kind of outrageous profits the big oil companies are making these days. That this might also result in a higher standard of living, a cleaner environment, and a better way of life for everybody, not just those in industrialized and oil-producing countries, is just an added benefit...