Solar Income: Difference between revisions
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=What is the Total Solar Income?= | =What is the Total Solar Income?= | ||
Sustainability of civilization (for many millenia) implies that humanity learns to live on its renewable energy income. That income of energy is that which comes from the sun. Therefore, the most fundamental question here is: how much solar energy income is available? And what does human civilization use today? The fact is, all of humanity today - primarily via fossil fuels - uses about 0.01% of the energy that is available - on a renewable basis - from the sun. See this basic calculation below - and convince yourself that the long term transition to renewable energy is not only possible - but inevitable - if civilization is to survive for more than 500 years. | Sustainability of civilization (for many millenia) implies that humanity learns to live on its renewable energy income. That income of energy is that which comes from the sun. Therefore, the most fundamental question here is: how much solar energy income is available? And what does human civilization use today? The fact is, all of humanity today - primarily via fossil fuels - uses about 0.01% of the energy that is available - on a renewable basis - from the sun. See this basic calculation below - and convince yourself that the long term transition to renewable energy is not only possible - but inevitable - if civilization is to survive for more than 500 years from 2020. | ||
Note that known fossil fuel reserves are estimated to last abput 150 more years. [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/years-of-fossil-fuel-reserves-left]. Further, known reserves of nuclear power feedstocks will last approximately 200 years [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/#:~:text=If%20the%20Nuclear%20Energy%20Agency,at%20current%20rates%20of%20consumption.]. | |||
=Solar Income= | =Solar Income= | ||
Revision as of 19:45, 8 October 2020
What is the Total Solar Income?
Sustainability of civilization (for many millenia) implies that humanity learns to live on its renewable energy income. That income of energy is that which comes from the sun. Therefore, the most fundamental question here is: how much solar energy income is available? And what does human civilization use today? The fact is, all of humanity today - primarily via fossil fuels - uses about 0.01% of the energy that is available - on a renewable basis - from the sun. See this basic calculation below - and convince yourself that the long term transition to renewable energy is not only possible - but inevitable - if civilization is to survive for more than 500 years from 2020.
Note that known fossil fuel reserves are estimated to last abput 150 more years. [1]. Further, known reserves of nuclear power feedstocks will last approximately 200 years [2].
Solar Income
- Area of earth's surface perpendicular to sun -
- Average insolation - 1000W [3]
- Radius of Earth - 6371 km - [4]
- Pi Arr Squared is 1.3x10^14 square meters
- Solar income is 1.3x10^17 watts upon the earth surface at any time.
Kardashev Scale
- In 2017, we used 162,000 TWh of energy. [5]
- There are 8,760 hours per year.
- Thus, average power use is 18 TW.
- 1.3E17/18E12 = 7222 - Solar Income is over 7000x greater than current primary energy production
- In other words, we are at 0.00014 on the Kardashev scale. That is about 1/100 of 1 percent, or 0.01%.