Excuse my total ignorance in this area, but what is the global warming
effect of 16,000 gigawatt-years of power being generated and used, and what
is the rate of increase of power use globally year on year?

John Burke

-----Original Message-----
From: EnviroNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Davy, Gordon
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2006 8:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [EN] Cheap renewable energy from photovoltaics

A recent news article by Ed Ring at
http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/2006/10/31/thin-film-photovoltaics/
discusses the possibility of cheap renewable energy from photovoltaics.
If this works, it will also reduce concern about CO2 production. An
excerpt follows.

"We are very close to learning whether or not what we've been waiting
for all these years has finally come true: Cheap abundant energy via
photovoltaics. What was required was a way to manufacture them for, say,
one-tenth the current costs, and from what representatives of several
photovoltaic manufacturers are telling us, that day has come.

"The entire energy consumption of the world in 2005, expressed in
electrical terms, was about 16,000 gigawatt-years. The current installed
base of photovoltaics in the world contributed a paltry 5 gigawatt-years
to that total. The entire manufacturing output of photovoltaics in 2005
was only about 1.5 gigawatts. But thin-skin photovoltaics don't depend
on finite supplies of polysilicon, and they are far less expensive to
manufacture.

"Photovoltaic technology is the most promising alternative energy source
we've ever seen to quickly usher in the era of clean, cheap, abundant
energy."



Gordon Davy