Re: Solar grand plan?

[Shane Mage <shmage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 11, 2008, at 12:19 PM, Doyle Saylor wrote:

> Greetings Economists,
> Scientific American online has this article here:  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
>
> That suggests a plan for 480 billion (in increments from now to 2050)
> to completely go over to solar energy in the U.S. economy.  Any
> thoughts from renewable economics perspective on this idea?  Secondly,
> they suggest in this article that it would not lower the current
> standard of living to adapt this regime.  Which seems to indicate a
> means for other countries to follow and develop upon.

If it projects $480b over 43 years there's nothing "grand" about it.
If the US
can afford an Iraq occupation costing over $100b a year it could just as
easily afford $4,800b over that period. A serious plan to convert the
whole
US economy to solar (including both its radiative and aeolian forms)
could
be accomplished in a much shorter time even with present technology (and
the technology is improving rapidly).  Start with enormous wind farms
in the
northern plains, dedicated to production of hydrogen by hydrolysis,
while
constructing dedicated pipelines to supply every present filling
station with
the hydrogen for fuel-cell cars.  Add solar farms in the southwestern
deserts connected to centers of use by DC transmission lines.  Require
all
new construction to be roofed with solar panels.

This, of course, requires a huge dose of government enterprise and
economic planning.  Which is why US (and British) monopoly capitalism
cannot even think of such a project. Its solution (embraced, alas by
some despairing radicals) is to invest more and ever more resources in
the
construction of  dangerous and technologically dead-end (but privately
owned, of course) nuclear power plants.

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to
be called Zeus."

Herakleitos of Ephesos