Solar Thermal Electricity
The United States generates much of its electricity with coal-fired power plants, continuously producing huge amounts of pollution. Those plants need to be closed down.
An alternative method for generating electricity is needed, at a scale that can replace those coal plants. The scale is important. Small-scale efforts are not enough to close those coal plants, because of insufficient output combined with market incrementalism creating incentives for waste. What is needed is to build large scale systems that produce more power and introduce large amounts of energy.
A group of scientists has written an article in the January 2008 issue of Scientific American magazine proposing large-scale solar energy generation that meets these needs, on land areas including where some of the coal mines and plants are now. The plan would close American coal plants, and create technologically suitable markets for solar energy hardware manufacturers, reducing pressure to impose hardware on less effective sectors.
| Another method of generating solar electricity will be to use concentrator photovoltaics (CPV). That will produce more electricity at less cost than current residential-style photovoltaics, but not as much electricity as the large-scale solar thermal electric plants described on this page. The CPV systems will be installed on the roofs of commercial buildings. |
