Will The Economic Slump Kill Solar Energy?
This decade has seen a revolution in renewable energy and solar power has certainly been one of the platforms to benefit in a major way. From government incentives to net metering to much more money being thrown into research, the future is bright. Or is it? The economic slump has raised the issue of whether the solar energy revolution will peter out.
The Great Recession has done a number on millions of people. Homes and jobs have been lost in numbers not seen since the Great Depression. All this being said, this is a temporary set back. The issue we all want to know is just how long will “temporary” be, but things will turn around at some point in time as we move forward. We find out answer to the issue of whether solar will peter out in this simple fact.
What has caused us to really look at the viability of solar and all renewable energy policies? Many would suggest climate change, but humanity has not shown much foresight as a species to make changes because of something that takes a hundred years or more to actually occur. No, the real truth is the viability of fossil fuels as we move forward, particularly oil.
Look around you and think about your week. Practically everything has some element of oil used in it. Petrochemicals are the keys to the plastic around you. Oil lubricates everything. Gas is needed to get from here to there. Oil is used in the pesticides used to grow your food, the trucks to get it to the grocery store and so on. The simple fact is much of the “easy oil” in the world is running out. There is still plenty of oil for the future, but none of the new fields are easy to tap. This is going to drive the cost of oil through the roof in the near future. If you thought gas prices of $4 a gallon were bad, you are really going to be unhappy in another ten years when they are at least double that.
The word produces roughly 85 million barrels of oil world wide. Before the economic slump, we were using about 84.5 million a day, which meant we were right up against the ceiling of our resources. The slump has resulted in a drop in demand, but what do you think is going to happen when economies start moving forward again? Demand is going to go back up and continue to do so. This is going to drive prices higher. Any cessation in the renewable energy revolution because of the slump will be over and the charge towards renewable energy will be under way again. This includes solar.
How bad could it be? Well, ignore what everyone including me is saying and look at the facts. A Democrat President has the environmental movement as one of his strongest supporters. What do they hate? Nuclear energy. Yet what have we seen? President Obama stating we must expand nuclear energy and issuing loan guarantees to do just that. If that doesn’t tell you everything, it certainly should.
