The Answser To All Our Problems

Solar thermal power plants seem to be the way to go:

Solar thermal electric systems operating in the US today [Solar Parabolic Troughs] meet the needs of over 350,000 people (equal to the population of the city of Fresno, CA or Miami, FL) and displace the equivalent of 2.3 million barrels of oil annually.

Solar thermal power plants create two and one-half times as many skilled, high paying jobs as do conventional power plants that use fossil fuels.

Solar Two, a “power tower” electricity generating plant in California (pictured above), is a 10-megawatt prototype for large-scale commercial power plants. It stores the sun’s energy in molten salt at 1050 degrees F, which allows the plant to generate power day and night, rain or shine. Construction was completed in March 1996, and it is now in its three year operating and testing phase.

Over 700 megawatts of solar thermal electric systems should be deployed by the year 2003 in the U.S. and internationally. The market for these systems should exceed 5,000 megawatts by 2010, enough to serve the residential needs of 7 million people (larger than the state of Georgia) which will save the energy equivalent of 46 million barrels of oil per year.

Utilizing only 1% of the earth’s deserts to produce clean solar electric energy would provide more electricity than is currently being produced on the entire planet by fossil fuels.

Add it to the list of things to fix when Obama gets elected. I’m sure we’ll get around to this someday.

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