According to the International Energy Agency, in 2013, fossil fuels and natural gas provided almost ⅔ of the world’s energy. At the current rate of population and energy consumption growth, these nonrenewable energy sources are expected to run out in 110 and 54 years, respectively. These are resources “which have their origins somewhere between 541 and 66 million years ago,” (Singh, Business Standard) and our planet will have completely exhausted them within 200 years of using them (according to Business Standard). While this is only based on current proven reserves and there is certainly a possibility that more recoverable resource deposits will be discovered, it is impossible to know for sure how long they will last. For something as vital to our way of life as energy, assuming the worst outcome is necessary as it would be tragic to have no alternative source of energy production in the face of dwindling resources. In the past two years, solar energy has surpassed wind energy as the most viable renewable energy technology of the future. Solar energy has the potential to power the entire world one day, but much additional research and development is needed before the technology is mature enough to do so.

Among the most prominent arguments for developing solar power as the energy technology of the future, two main points emerge. The first point is rather obvious, that solar power is much greener than current coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear technologies. All of these produce harmful outputs ranging from ozone destroying smog to radioactive waste, things that simply aren’t present when obtaining energy from the sun. Additionally, all of the aforementioned current energy production methods utilize resources that are being depleted faster than they can be regenerated -- they are considered nonrenewable. The attractive part about solar energy is that sunlight is an unlimited resource. The second main point in the argument for solar energy is that the solar industry is inherently more technology based and will create a huge amount of new high quality jobs in the technology and energy sectors. Many of these new jobs will be as a result of pioneering solar energy companies, such as Tesla, Inc. child company SolarCity which is in the process of building the largest solar panel manufacturing plant in the world in Buffalo, NY. “The plant eventually is expected to produce enough solar panels annually to generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity” (Robinson, The Buffalo News). This will have a very positive impact on the economy, bringing hundreds of new jobs to the area.

In response to the largest two arguments for the development of solar technology, I tend to agree with the claims made. There really is not much debate as to the cleanliness of solar energy, in fact, it would be about as harmless as a plant undergoing photosynthesis. The sunlight will never run out (or else we will have much bigger problems) so there will not be any pressure to develop a new energy source before resources run out. While there are certainly many viable arguments against solar energy or renewable energy in general, the truth remains that we are in a race against the clock. That is, a clock in which we have no idea how much time we have left before the nonrenewable resources used to produce energy today are completely depleted. In response to the economic benefits that could come as a result of solar technology, any new industry growth explosion will result in an influx of new jobs. The only downside that I see is that as solar energy replaces older technology, those jobs will inevitably be replaced and we may not end up with added jobs in the long run. On the other hand, solar power is inherently more technology based and will generally add higher quality jobs to the technology sector in place of the current manufacturing jobs created by nonrenewable energy power plants. Recently, United States based companies have been putting more research into solar technology than any other country. This will help to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States instead of them being outsourced to countries such as China or India. Besides benefitting the U.S. economy even more, this has the added benefit of maintaining the solar technology at the most stringent quality standards, improving the rate of technology advances in the long run. Outsourcing manufacture would be cheaper, but the fragmentation between research and manufacture would slow advances drastically.

There are several valid arguments against the transition to solar energy, most of which revolve around monetary issues. The most argued point on this side is that the initial investment cost needed to put a sizeable dent into the energy market would be astronomically high. Solar energy only makes up less than five percent of the total energy produced in the world so it is far from mainstream for the time being. Energy companies will want to recover the money that they spent to invest into this technology so they will turn around and charge consumers more per unit of energy until it is more efficient. Another huge argument against the transition to solar energy lies in the availability of sunlight to power it. Sunlight is only available during the daytime and different parts of the world get different amounts of sunlight depending on weather patterns and where they are located in relation to the equator. In fact, “depending on the time of year, areas that are far north or far south on the globe may find that the seasons are a bit disproportionate, resulting in nights that can last for over 24 hours at a time” (Glenn). This creates obvious problems where sunlight is lacking more often than not. Regarded by Forbes as the best argument ever made against solar energy, Jimmy Fallon states his opinion on Tonight Show. Fallon starts out by making the point that “for something to be cheap and plentiful, every part of the process to produce it, including every input that goes into it, must be cheap and plentiful” (Fallon). He expands on his point by saying that “the basic problem is that because sunlight and wind are dilute (low-concentration) and intermittent (unreliable) energy inputs, it takes a lot of resources to collect and concentrate them, and even more resources to make them available on-demand” (Fallon). He makes a very good argument here, with current technology, it would take more land than we can afford to use in order to collect enough solar energy to make a sizeable dent in the energy market. With the ever growing population, all the extra land needs to be utilized for food production, not for giant fields of solar panels. A lesser, but still valid point against solar energy is that in many instances, birds and other animals are killed by coming into contact with the extremely hot solar panels. 

To address the points against solar technology, they are all valid and worth considering, but if the alternative is to do nothing and wait for the current resources to run out, then it is worth the possible downsides to create a source of energy that will provide for greater longevity. Indeed, the barrier to entry for utilizing sunlight to produce energy on a large scale will be unavoidably high at first, there is no way around this. The reality is that any new energy technology implemented on such a scale would have astronomically high initial investment costs. This could deter many people from making the transition, but I believe that incentives and/or subsidies for the pioneers of solar energy would make more people and companies consider making the switch. There are already some of these in place, but they needed to be increased and marketed better in order to convince a larger portion of the population. As more people adopt the technology, the prices will be pushed lower, making it appealing to an even higher proportion of the population, eventually (hopefully) leading to mainstream adoption. To remedy the issue of unproportional sunlight throughout the world, a more comprehensive power grid will have to be put into place. This is another unavoidable barrier that will have to be addressed in order to completely phase out nonrenewable energy sources. While this will be a problem in the future, the current issue is improving the efficiency of solar technology. To avoid the claims of Fallon coming true, the size of solar panels and batteries will need to be decreased by orders of magnitudes so that they won’t take up precious land that we do not have to spare. An increase in efficiency would also mitigate the issue of danger to birds and other animals. An increase in efficiency and reduction in solar panel size will lead to less surface heat coming off of the panels and a drastically reduced fatality rate of animals coming into contact with them.

So why is it that solar is considered superior to other methods of renewable energy production? In a comprehensive comparison between solar and wind energy, Iowa Wind and Solar concluded that solar is superior to wind in frequency/cost of maintenance due to less moving parts, integration options because they can be mounted anywhere (vs. 30 foot tall turbines), output reliability, because sunlight is easier to predict than wind patterns, and lifespan because solar panels generally last 25+ years as opposed to 5-10 years for wind turbines. Solar also came out on top in noise (solar panels do not generate sound) and lower cost per kWH produced due to solar panels being more efficient than wind turbines according to the study.

Weighing in the arguments for and against solar power as the energy production technology of the future, it is easy to see that both sides make clear and valid points. Despite this, the truth remains that one day earth will run out of coal, oil, uranium, and natural gas and an alternative energy source will be needed. It is easy to ignore this issue because it likely will not impact anyone in this generation, but nevertheless, it is in the best interest of the human race to begin the transition. At this point in time, there is no need to rush to develop mature solar technology, but we do need to start the process. Increasing the percentage of the world that is powered by renewable energy will increase the amount of time that we have by slowing the rate of nonrenewable resource consumption in the long run. In conclusion, solar energy has the potential to power the entire world one day as long as research and development is emphasized over the next few decades in order to mature the technology.