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Guinness Murphy

Mr. Steven Wyrick

CCP, ENG-1101(6)

17 December 2018

A Brighter Future with Solar Energy

Humans have been using fossil fuels since 1000 BC, but it wasn’t until the 1700s that we

began using them as a primary source of energy. It has always been our instinct to use what we

have on Earth, it is what we’ve been using for hundreds of years. Fossil fuels are cheap, efficient

and reliable, but they aren’t what we should be using. Earth is four billion years old; over the

time of its existence, fossil fuels have been formed and in the past three hundred years we have

used up the majority of them. Instead of using the resources the Earth provides us with, we

should be using the resource the sun provides us, light. We are able to take sunlight and convert

it into energy, thus the name solar energy. In the paragraphs to come, the reasoning to switch to

solar energy and why it is a better choice for us will be further explained.

Solar energy didn’t significantly reach the consumer market until the 1970s, when

Freeman Ford created the solar pool heater. One day Ford realized his gas powered pool heater

was broken. He was tired of putting money into fixing it constantly, so he decided that he would

use the power of the sun. “Ford could use an inexpensive collector of plastic, not copper and

glass” (Perlin 24). It took Ford multiple tries to get it to work, but he eventually succeeded and

“by 1977, fully 60 percent of California’s 250,000 pools were solar heated” (Perlin 24).

Over the next few decades, multiple people also began to innovate different ways solar

power could be used. Steve Baer was one of them; he created the drum-wall heating system. On

the outside of Baer’s house he installed panels of glass and a door in front of them. In the winter
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he would open up the door and allow sunlight to heat the glass. He would then close the door and

the glass would heat a large water barrel. The water in the barrel would then radiate the heat into

his house and therefore he could have heating.

Steve Baer was part of a group of people who liked to tinker with solar appliances. David

Wright was a part of that group as well. Wright used parts of Steve’s water wall idea and made a

house that was heated by a glass wall. It was a double sided glass wall that would radiate heat

into the house. The house was made of adobe brick because it is a good insulator. He was able to

open or close the house up with shutters. So whenever the sun was out he could open them and

then when it was night he would close them and the heat throughout the day would last all night

in the house.

To be able to do these things at such a primitive time in the history of solar power was no

easy feat because in the late 1970s, solar power was extremely expensive. Pricing for solar has

“declined by $0.20-per-watt (W) or 5% year-over-year for residential systems, by $0.30/W (7%)

for smaller non-residential systems, and by $0.30/W (9%) for larger non-residential systems”

(Median Installed Price of Solar 42). Today a decent solar panel can be purchased for about three

hundred dollars, so try imagining the prices three decades ago. The reasoning behind the large

price difference is technology. Today some solar panels are able to track the sun and stay

focused directly at it! “In addition, developers have been augmenting the size of projects’ solar

arrays relative to their inverters (resulting in higher inverter loading ratios, or ILRs), as another

way to boost output. Finally, over the past few years, projects have, on average, been built at

sites with stronger resources” (Median Installed Price of Solar 42-43).

So, now to the problem at hand ‒ Earth is running out of fossil fuels. It is predicted that

they will all be gone by 2088. What do we do when they run out? Well, once they run out, if
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nothing is done by then, then we are most definitely going to die; but if we start changing our

ways now we will be able to save ourselves. “Global material extraction increases by more than

90% over the past 30 years and is reaching almost 70 billion tonnes today” (Rafindadi, 11396).

Solar energy is what will save us as a species because solar power relies not on fuel, but on

technology. Solar energy cannot be depleted like fossil fuels can. Fossil fuels last a short amount

of time while solar energy won’t go away until the sun goes away and that won’t be for another

four or five billion years.

While the world has been slow to accept solar energy, some countries are making

tremendous progress. The world leaders in solar use are China, the European Union, the United

States, and Japan. China is the country leading the way; they are motivated more than any other

country to switch because of how bad their pollution is. The United States and the European

Union are also among the biggest polluters which has led them to rank second and third in the

use of solar power.

Pollution is another factor when talking about solar energy and why we need to switch.

China is the largest country in the world, so they produce the most pollution. It is predicted that

by 2035 “China, India, and other developing Asian countries accounting for over 60% of the

global total” (Rafindadi 11395). The rest of the world only accounts for forty percent. Tianying,

China is the most polluted city in the world. They are one of the biggest industrial cities as well.

When looking at pictures of Tianying, it looks like a picture of pure smog and large smoke pipes.

This is happening in more than one city across the world. Multiple countries have extremely

polluted cities. This pollution problem could be solved if we switched to solar power. Unlike

fossil fuels, solar power does not release carbon into the air, so carbon emissions would go down
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dramatically. A benefit of low carbon in the air is that the Ozone would be able to repair itself.

That would cause a reduction and stabilization of global warming.

Some people believe that we should keep fossil fuels. They say that they are more

efficient than renewable energy, they are easier to transport, and that they generate thousands of

jobs. While all these things may be true, it doesn’t mean that they are well thought out

statements. Fossil fuels are the most efficient energy; renewable energy doesn’t come even close

to the amount of energy that fossil fuels produce, but what it comes down to is a person's values

and their beliefs. Do they believe that we should take care of the environment or do they not

care? It is true that fossil fuels are easier to transport, but does this matter more than saving the

environment? The use of fossil fuels does provide thousand of jobs, but the same could be said

for renewable energies. Someone has to make the solar panels, someone has to move them,

someone has to install them, someone has to clean them and make sure they are working

properly.

Solar power is the better choice over every other kind of energy. Solar power reduces

electricity bills, it is a renewable energy source, it’s environmentally friendly, there is little to no

maintenance, and installing solar panels creates jobs. Hydropower involves damming up water,

which can create flooding and change the way water flows. When first setting it up, hydropower

is extremely expensive, there are only a few places that it can be set up, and if there is not

enough water because of a drought, then it doesn’t work. Wind energy is also not the best option

because wind turbines are loud, trees have to be cut down to get them up, they can kill wildlife,

some people think they look ugly, and they are unreliable because it isn’t always windy.

Solar power is not perfect though. It does have some effects on the environment. Solar

panels reflect heat, so if anything is directly above a Concentrated Solar Power farm it would be
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extremely hot. Birds have been hit by hot beams of light that burn right through their wings and

cause them to fall and die. If every country in the world had large Concentrated Solar Power

farms then there could be large numbers of birds dying, which could have a negative effect on

the environment. Solar panels also take up a lot of space and they are very weather dependent. If

the sun is not out because it is cloudy or if it is raining then there is not a charge being built in

them. Photovoltaics, is the conversion of light into electricity, this process can release toxic gases

and materials; however, one start up company is changing this. Startup company Simbol plans on

creating lithium batteries “made not from mining but from waste generated by geothermal power

production…Simbol would make lithium from brine that’s a byproduct of geothermal power

production” (Fried 12).

One of the ways to weaken this effect is by creating Tesla Gigafactories. Tesla is an

electric automobile company that creates cars and solar panels. They are creating the world's

largest building, at fifteen million square feet or three hundred forty four acres! The Gigafactory

roof is all solar panels, but the factory itself also makes energy through those solar panels. “The

goal is to reduce the cost of batteries by 30 percent in the first year, to produce a ‘compelling,

affordable electric car in about three years’” (Fried 12). They use the energy from the solar

panels to make lithium batteries which contain even more energy. One hundred Gigafactories

would power the entire world. Each factory takes about six years to build, but that is with only

one company doing all of the work. If every nation were to do what they are doing, one hundred

Gigafactories could be built in a short period of time. We could then stop using fossil fuels and

rely on energy produced by Gigafactories. A factory costs four billion to five billion dollars to

create. A typical solar farm that size would cost about two hundred million dollars to create. By

making multiple farms, there is a large surface area of panels being created, causing a greater
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impact on the environment. This is why the Gigafactory is better because they have the building

as a solar farm, but inside of the building is where they are creating the most power with

batteries. They use the power from the farm and the batteries to create even more energy.

While Tesla is doing everything they can to get solar power out there and make it the

norm, they can’t do it by themselves. We need everyone in the entire world to be a part of this;

from the United States to India to Australia, every nation needs to participate in this. It is going

to require innovation and it’s not going to be cheap, but if we could switch from fossil fuels to

solar energy then we would be able preserve our environment while meeting our need for energy

and we won’t be going extinct anytime soon. (Unless we get hit by an Earth sized asteroid!)
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Work Cited

Fried, Rona. “Tesla Gigafactory: Boom for Rare Earths, Cheap Energy Storage.” Solar Today,

vol. 28, no. 3, May 2014, p. 12. EBSCOhost, sinclair.ohionet.org.

“Median Installed Price of Solar in the United States Fell by 5-12% in 2015.” Solar Today, vol.

30, no. 4, Fall 2016, pp. 42–43. EBSCOhost, sinclair.ohionet.org.

Perlin, John. “The ’70S: Roots of Modern Solar Design.” Solar Today, vol. 28, no. 4, July

2014, pp. 24–27. EBSCOhost, sinclair.ohionet.org.

Rafindadi, Abdulkadir, et al. “The Relationship between Air Pollution, Fossil Fuel Energy

Consumption, and Water Resources in the Panel of Selected Asia-Pacific Countries.”

Environmental Science & Pollution Research, vol. 21, no. 19, Oct. 2014, pp.

11395-1400. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11356-014-3095-1.