Editor's Note: This month's Naional Geographic has an expansive article entitled "Plugging Into the Sun" that is well worth reading.
"If we talk about geothermal or wind, all these other sources of renewable energy are limited in their quantity," Eicke Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in Freiburg, Germany, told me last fall. "The total power needs of the humans on Earth is approximately 16 terawatts," he said. (A terawatt is a trillion watts.) "In the year 2020 it is expected to grow to 20 terawatts. The sunshine on the solid part of the Earth is 120,000 terawatts. From this perspective, energy from the sun is virtually unlimited."
"If we talk about geothermal or wind, all these other sources of renewable energy are limited in their quantity," Eicke Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in Freiburg, Germany, told me last fall. "The total power needs of the humans on Earth is approximately 16 terawatts," he said. (A terawatt is a trillion watts.) "In the year 2020 it is expected to grow to 20 terawatts. The sunshine on the solid part of the Earth is 120,000 terawatts. From this perspective, energy from the sun is virtually unlimited."
Balance of article: National Geographic
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