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