What are some statistics about solar energy? Please cite sources.
1 Answer
Growing demand and technical advances.
Explanation:
"No other energy source compares to the energy potential of solar power (http://cleantechnica.com/solar-power/)."
Technological advances and policies to promote research, development, and realization of solar have resulted in notable drops in the cost of solar power over the past few years.
"Even without taking important health and safety costs (note that a Harvard study concluded in 2011 that the health costs of coal are $500 billion a year in the U.S.), environmental costs, energy security costs, and other social costs into account, solar is already cost-competitive with new electricity from conventional energy options like coal and nuclear energy (if you take into account how long it would take coal or nuclear plants to get built) — see the graphs below (http://cleantechnica.com/solar-power/)."
"Dropping costs, as well as concerns like global warming and air pollution, have triggered massive growth in the solar energy industry. I’m going to focus on U.S. solar energy industry growth here, but the trends are similar globally and in other major economies, like China, Germany, the UK, Spain, and many other countries (http://cleantechnica.com/solar-power/)."
"Solar energy is a flexible energy technology: solar power plants can be built as distributed generation (located at or near the point of use) or as a central-station, utility-scale solar power plant (similar to traditional power plants). Some utility-scale solar plants can store the energy they produce for use after the sun sets (http://www.seia.org/about/solar-energy)."
