The USA Is Already Getting Left Behind In the Dust On The Way To Solar Power

I went to a recent lecture by Alaskans who went on a tour of Norway to see what they are doing with their PFD eqivalent. They have a 600 million fund they use to make more money and fund universal health care and free education from preschool through Doctorates.  They are doing lots of other good stuff too. They hooked up a volcano to a power plant, for example.


This is another renewable energy project Europe is working on with Morocco, Egypt, and other countries:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/11/sahara-solar-panels-green-electricity


I went to another lecture about alternative energy and found out that Europe is working on Tidal power plants. They are actually building them now.


Some Alaskan politicians went to Norway and were impressed. It would be nice if they did something useful with the information. We can't do exactly what they do in Norway, but we can use some of their ideas and do it our way.


The Guardian article talks about Desertec, a solar power project based in Morocco, so far, with plans to include other desert countries to generate a giant solar power plant. It is intended supply the needs of desert locals and 15% of Europe's power needs. They had been aiming at 2050, but are moving the schedule up to 2020 in the advent of Fukushima nuclear disaster.


Germany is the engine pushing this project and they have decided to completely eliminate nuclear power from their grid as soon as possible. Desertec is part of their way of achieving this goal. CSP , Concentrated Solar Power is the favored technology. It has been in use in other areas already including the USA.  "Flagsol is the German company that specialises in building concentrated solar power (CSP) plants in the deserts of the US, Spain and now Egypt.," according to the Guardian. Technology from two other German companies is being used for Desertec. "And only two companies in the world make the glass tube receivers, which is where the main intellectual property of this technology lays – Schott Solar and Siemens," according to Bodo Becker, the operations manager at Flagsol. He was interviewed by the Guardian writer, Leo Hickman, in the article linked above.


The United States is getting ready to sign on to an international agreement to have legal penalties for countries that do not meet limits to pollution. Renewable power sources are necessary for the human race to survive. This country will be at a severe disadvantage if it does not have adequate domestic resources for renewable energy. We are not tending to business very well when we let those US producers, of the equipment we will need, go to other countries like China. Continued decisions like these can add up to a position for our country as a third world nation in the not-so-distant future, instead of the world leader status we enjoy now. Let's not get left behind in the dust cloud of other nations passing us by.