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History and Future of Renewable Solar Energy

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Abstract

For many thousands of years the use of solar energy has shaped human settlements and cities, farming and forestry, architecture and buildings, landscapes and territories, religious beliefs and cultures, and social relations and lifestyles on Earth. Cesare Silvi from the Italian Group for the History of Solar Energy (GSES) asks whether renewable solar energy could now power the world in this third millennium? He looks at the Earth system and science, ancient and modern solar ages, the nuclear or solar debate in the 1950s and today, and human habitat and agriculture.

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Notes

  1. With the exception of nuclear, geothermal and tidal energy, all forms of energy used on earth originate from the sun's energy. Some are renewable, some are not. ‘Renewable’ is the term used for forms of energy that can be regenerated, or renewed, in a relatively short amount of time. The regeneration process may be continuous and immediate, as in the case of direct solar radiation, or it may take some hours, months or years. This is the case of wind energy (generated by the uneven heating of air masses), hydro energy (related to the sun-powered cycle of water evaporation and rain), biomass energy (stored in forests, plants and other biomass through photosynthesis), and the energy contained in marine currents. The energy contained in fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – likewise comes from the sun's energy, but it was stored in plants millions of years ago, and once used, it cannot be regenerated on a human time scale. The Earth's remaining fossil fuel reserves can probably provide us with energy for another 100–500 years, but this is an insignificant amount of time in terms of the whole past history of human civilization and (one hopes) of its future.

  2. The Italian Solar Energy History Group (GSES) is a volunteer-based non-profit organization whose goals are to promote the study and knowledge of the history of the use of solar energy (in its direct and indirect forms), for social, civil and cultural purposes, and to promote greater awareness of how the Earth functions and of the use of its renewable natural resources, for the purposes of human and socioeconomic development. The organization has operating offices in Rome and Brescia (www.gses.it; info@gses.it).

References

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  • President's Materials Policy Commission (Paley Commission) (1952) The Promise of Technology – The Possibilities of Solar Energy, pp 213–220, IV, Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.

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Considers whether renewable solar energy could power the world in the third millennium?

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Silvi, C. History and Future of Renewable Solar Energy. Development 51, 409–414 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2008.45

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