"The amount of sunshine energy that hits the surface of the Earth every minute is greater than the total amount of energy that the world's human population consumes in a year!"(Home Power Magazine)
"Comparing finite and renewable planetary energy reserves (Terawatt‐years). Total recoverable reserves are shown for the finite resources. Yearly potential is shown for the renewables." (source: Perez & Perez, 2009a)
With such huge potential and wide distribution of renewable energy, so much so that it is almost impossible to find a nation or a place on this globe whose requirements cannot be met by these sources, it is surprising that human minds are still looking in different directions for their energy needs and energy security. What is their compulsion to wait for the day when all finite energy resources will dry out particularly when wisdom desires that we must save on Carbon as it is precious and must be saved for future generations. The opinion of Edison on the nature's inexhaustible sources has been reproduced to put the discussion on renewable vs finite energy sources in the right perspective.
Some of the reasons for renewable energy not being given its rightful place are
- Of no use as a weapon of war
- Any change from the long established practices and technologies are resisted by cartels of nations,industries and even the technocrat lobbies for reasons of self interest and fear of losing on their monopolies and importance. The nuclear energy nations and their oil and nuclear industry cartels will like to delay the solar and wind energy technologies to keep milking their huge investments in oilfields, technologies and industrial base.
