 Solar
Eclipse
Written
by Stuart Ewen,
to the New York Times,
July 30, 2007
To the Editor:
I am sure I was not alone in my dismay when I read that, despite
large numbers of people expressing support for solar energy as the
favored power supply of the future, research funding for solar energy
from private and governmental sources remains miniscule. (“The
Energy Challenge: Solar Power Wins Enthusiasts But Not Money,”
July 16, 2007). Concurrently, research for energy sources that threaten
the environment and the future of unborn generations (oil, coal
and nuclear power) receive the lion’s share of support. If
this continues, you report that even a quarter century from now
“solar power might account for, at best, 2 or 3 percent of
the grid electricity in the United States.”
Meanwhile power stations that burn coal, eating away at the ozone
layer at an alarming rate “are being built around the world
at a rate of more than one a week.” How can this be? What
about global warming and its already portentous impact? Why is the
sun as a source of energy being eclipsed?
Could it be that a government dominated by the fossil fuel industry,
and a private sector that savors its ability to monopolize the availability
of electrical and other forms of power, would rather maintain its
profits than think about developing an energy source that is free,
readily available, but harder to own? Are the sun, and the ecosystems
it dutifully sustains, the victims of malign neglect?
We always hear about achieving “energy independence,”
which is usually a euphemism for freedom from foreign sources of
oil. Perhaps it is time for us to start talking about “energy
independence” from the huge corporations and moneyed powers
that decide which energy supplies shall dominate, and control those
sources that will be developed, and underdeveloped.
Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned from Michael Moore’s
film “Sicko,” which maintains that the healthcare system
in America will only be fixed if it is freed from the chains of
the profit motive. It is also probably worth considering the idea
that the only route to building plentiful energy sources that don’t
undermine the planet’s future, is to separate society’s
energy supply from the profit system as well.
Meaningful support for an expansion of solar energy, both from light
and heat, will only happen when the global energy monopolies —
which benefit from the ability to manipulate access to fuel, and
to define international research agendas — are removed from
society’s development of sound, healthful and visionary energy
policies. The greater good demands it.
—Stuart Ewen
—Truro, Massachusetts
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Only one day after the article quoted in the letter appeared,
the Times published another article (“In the Desert, Harnessing
the Power of the Sun by Capturing Heat Instead of Light,”
July 17, 2007), in the business section, which detailed new advances
in thermal solar energy technology, which uses long convex mirror
arrays to gather and store the Sun’s heat, in pipes filled
with molten salt, to drive steam turbines that generate electricity
far more effectively than more conventional, light-driven, photovoltaic
cells.
A new thermal solar plant called Solar One (built by Acciona Energy,
a Spanish company) has been constructed in Boulder City, Nevada.
Even on an experimental scale, Solar One is able to generate electricity
at a per kilowatt hour cost at about two or three cents above the
current retail cost of conventionally produced electricity.
The article on solar thermal energy made no mention of the prior
day’s piece, referenced in the letter, and the extent to which
the under-funding of solar energy research keeps such promising,
and pollution-free, technologies from taking hold on a scale that
might significantly benefit the future of the biosphere. By failing
to draw important connections between one piece of “news”
and another, newspaper readers must synthesize fragments of reality
into a coherent story. Serious journalism should be working to de-fragment
the essential questions of our time, not contributing to the problem.
See also “Solar Energy: The Costly Revival
of Support for Nuclear Energy” in the Business
& Economics section of this issue.
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