Replacing Every Watt of Earth’s Power Consumption with Renewable Energy
Frequent commenter Peter Buck asks, “Craig – when you say the sun supplies 6000 times what we use, does that mean “if the entire surface of the world were covered with solar cells”? If so, I despair. If not, exactly what is meant and where does that figure come from?”
Yes, that’s essentially what it means. (It’s a bit more complicated than that due to the reflection of energy back into space from the atmosphere and from the Earth’s surface, the absorption rates of different wavelengths, etc.) Taking all this scientific stuff into account, we’re receiving 23,000 terawatts, though that’s still about 1500 times more than all seven billion of us are using (16 TW). (more…)
