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 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]. This is expandable to thousands of years if other techniques for extracting uranium are developed [3]. And - what about the unlimited reserves of hydrogen for fusion power? Practical fusion on earth is only 10 years away - it always was - and it always will be! That is a joke among fusion physicists. But the reality is that extracting fusion successfully - outside of the sun that is 93 million miles away - is not an easy thing to do.

Note also that humanity used 135 billion barrels of oil to date [4]. Known reserves are approximately 10x this [5]. So for perspective - the facts are that the supply is not unlimited. In fact, all of the energy from all fossil fuels ever used and still remaining in reserve - is equivalent to about 10 days of available solar income! Take that for perspective: all the confilict that is waged over scarce fossil fuels worldwide can vanish - if we decided to shift to renewable energy.

Please go through the basic calculations below to convince yourself that renewable energy is preferred for human prosperity - as indicated above. So that you can understand that these numbers are very compelling to act upon a renewable energy future - today.

Solar Income

• Area of earth's surface perpendicular to sun -
• Average insolation - 1000W [6]
• Radius of Earth - 6371 km - [7]
• 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. [8]
• There are 8,760 hours per year.
• Thus, average power use is 18 TW.
• 1.3E17/18E12 = 7222.
• This is a ratio of power. This is also a ratio of energy used (per given time)
• Thus, the energy of solar income is over 7000x greater than current primary energy used
• In other words, we are at 0.00014 on the Kardashev scale. That is about 1/100 of 1 percent, or 0.01%.
• In other words - solar energy can provide all the energy to humanity - many times over - with no implication for scarcity anywhere in the world.