So anyone who thinks we can manufacture nearly 500 billion square meters of solar panels by 2030, raise your hand.
It seems clear that if we were to do this it couldn't be all photovoltaics. Even with concentrating solar cells that's a lot of silicon and/or more rare elements (indium etc.).
With solar-thermal added into the mix it becomes potentially feasible, but who is going to fund a huge solar farm in the middle of a politically unstable region like north africa?
Another technical problem is that you have to transmit all that power somehow. I'm no expert but I would imagine that you would need orders of magnitude higher voltage transmission lines (or more of them) than currently exist. Also, the geography of most of those location is pretty intense.
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So anyone who thinks we can manufacture nearly 500 billion square meters of solar panels by 2030, raise your hand.
It seems clear that if we were to do this it couldn't be all photovoltaics. Even with concentrating solar cells that's a lot of silicon and/or more rare elements (indium etc.).
With solar-thermal added into the mix it becomes potentially feasible, but who is going to fund a huge solar farm in the middle of a politically unstable region like north africa?
Another technical problem is that you have to transmit all that power somehow. I'm no expert but I would imagine that you would need orders of magnitude higher voltage transmission lines (or more of them) than currently exist. Also, the geography of most of those location is pretty intense.