$300 Trillion for Solar To Supply All World’s Electricity?

Among all the noise and sound about solar comes an interesting analysis.

To a question on how much land area would be required for solar to supply the total world’s electricity, the answer is provided as approximately 500,000 sq km. And the cost for this? About $300 trillion!

I am not sure how reliable their calculations are, but if these numbers are correct, it is a mind boggling amount to invest to have solar as a sole source of power. Given that solar PV systems have a lifetime of about 25 years, every 25 years this amount needs to be reinvested (OK, not so much, perhaps much less than half given that solar panel prices are falling dramatically, but even that will be a lot of money).

So, that would be $300 trillion for 25 years or about $12 trillion per year.

Whew!

LED Lighting to Capture 52% of the Commercial Building Market by 2021, According to Pike Research

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are gaining significant momentum as an alternative to incandescent and fluorescent lighting in commercial buildings, particularly as the cost of LED lighting technology continues its rapid decline. While the market share of LED solid-state lighting (SSL) is currently quite low, a new report from Pike Research forecasts that LED share will reach 52% of the commercial lighting market by 2021. The cleantech market intelligence firm anticipates that LED lighting costs for various SSL products will be reduced by 80% to 90% in many cases during the next decade.

The report adds that incandescent and less efficient T12 and T8 fluorescent lamps will be almost completely eliminated over the next 10 years. To take more than 50% of the market, LEDs will take share from compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), high-intensity discharge (HID) lighting, and general linear fluorescents.

Pike Research forecasts that the global market for commercial lighting will reach $42 billion in 2011 and see a peak of nearly $54 billion in 2012 before gradually declining to about $30 billion by 2021. The decline will be due to the extended lamp life of both fluorescents and LEDs as they become the primary lamp types, increasingly displacing demand for replacements for less efficient and shorter-lived incandescent lamps.

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Thorium: World’s greatest nuclear energy breakthrough?

If you are eager for a dependable and cheap energy source that doesn’t spew toxins and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere — and that doesn’t result in terrible, billion dollar accidents — there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. It could be from a common but relatively unknown metal called thorium.

In the right kind of nuclear reactor, they say, thorium could power the world forever — and without the problems that come with the nuclear energy we use today, from Fukushima-like meltdowns to the difficult by-products of plutonium that leave behind radioactive waste and weapons material.

More from this CNN report