No matter how you feel about the war in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, you should feel just as confused as I do when you hear that they still don’t have reliable electric power. In the middle of the desert, where there is a lot of sunshine, and little to block it, why have we spent so little of the money spent in this region for solar power? Israel has finally figured out that with all their sunshine, they can harness the power of the sun and make their nation less relied on fossil fuels. I think that finally the world is starting to see that solar power is more than a way to make the lives of industrialized nations easier. It is a way to make the lives of emerging nations citizens better and help in making them less dependent on others. How is this happening? Private development.
I was reading about solar powered cell phones. You may think this is great for your carbon footprint, but in developing countries, this is the beginning of the industrial age. While we take for granted that phone service we use, many people around the world do not have the adequate electricity to operate a telephone system. Enter the solar cell phone and a tower, and skip the grid of wires and phone poles that built our service here in America. Phone service can now be made available in areas that have no electrical grid at all. I have seen all kinds of new solar power devices that are coming to market. Lamps, light fixtures and flashlights are the most exciting. Many people have the small solar powered garden lights, but improvements in efficiency, batteries and bulbs have taken this garden light to new heights! In many places on the globe, work is a daytime affair. Anything done after sundown is heavily reliant on expensive kerosene and other fuel based lights. With solar lights taking away some of this burden, cheap illumination can come to the nations who are too poor to install a modern electrical grid. Besides the phone, there are solar powered laptops and radios hitting the market. While we may not see them as practical in much of the US, this can bring communications to parts of the world that never had it. One of the coolest new toys that I have seen is a universal charger with a small solar panel built into it. Now you can charge nearly any portable electric device with a simple gadget. Maybe not great news for cloudy cities like Seattle or Cleveland, but fantastic news for countries in Africa and the Middle East, where electricity is costly and hard to come by.
But what does the emerging markets have to do with us here in America? Quite a bit, actually. While we have been adding to the stress of the environment and pouring CO2 into the atmosphere, underdeveloped nations have been adding very little. Now that they are getting a taste of the technology pie, they will be adding to the overall output of greenhouse gases and global waste stream. The big thing, though is that they do not yet have these systems in place. By putting smart systems in place in the beginning, these emerging markets can join the technological savvy west, but in a smarter and cleaner way. Take India, for example. In recent years, their exploding economy has been adding modern conveniences to all members of their society. This could produce a huge strain on the region’s environment and the planet as a whole. India, however is addressing the issues up front. Many cars run on cleaner natural gas or electricity rather than dirty petrol. This is an important fact as India has a population of over a billion people. As we start to add newer economies to the world mix, it is important that they have greener technology to begin with, as retro fitting is a long and expensive process-look at the US. Furthermore, efficiencies in technology can make it easier to solve global problems in underdeveloped countries. Cheap efficient electricity can help to grow more food, educate more citizens and make other nations less reliant on the help of others. This means more money here at home to make our own grid smarter and our houses more efficient.
So while we are spending millions on goodwill around the world, I think we should try sticking some solar panels in the world’s deserts. We need to start thinking of the sunshine available outside our borders not just inside them. The solar panels we put on our new offices will be great, but the same panels would do a lot more good in the deserts of the Middle East.
Tags: Energy, environment, Solar Power
I keep listening to the news speak about getting free online grant applications so I have been looking around for the best site to get one.:)