By Tom Harris 8 Oct 2010 [0 Comments | 495 views]
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If you are a regular reader here, you will know this column is a fan of technology and believes that we can innovate our way into solving the impending energy and food crises. Some paint a very bleak view of the world, suggesting that just about all economic growth is down to carbon fuels. We won’t be able to use these types of fuels for much longer, and therefore we are all doomed.
We disagree, and here is news on two new innovations that illustrate our point.
According to an article in Scientific American in May 2008: “The energy in sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption of a year.” If we could only become better at tapping into this source of energy via solar power, then the energy crisis is over, for good.
There is a snag, of course. If we learnt how to harness the power of the sun directly and generate electricity from solar power, what would we do when the sun went in, or at night time?
Here are two examples of new innovations, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT.
Firstly, scientists at MIT have come up with a way of efficiently using solar power to separate oxygen and hydrogen from water, in a process that mirrors photosynthesis. The process requires a lot of energy for it to work, but when the sun is shining solar power can provide that energy quickly and efficiently. Then later, when it’s dark or the sun goes in, says MIT: “the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.”
If you want more on the science, see: Major discovery’ from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution
Meanwhile, another group at the same institute has come up with an idea for using a kind of nanotube to generate 100 times more solar power than using a regular photovoltaic cell. Michael Strano, who is a professor of chemical engineering and leader of the research team, not to mention the man named by Popular Science magazine as one of “ten geniuses shaking up science today”, put it like this: “Instead of having your whole roof be a photovoltaic cell, you could have little spots that were tiny photovoltaic cells, with antennas that would drive photons into them.” For more, see: Funneling Solar Energy: Antenna Made of Carbon Nanotubes Could Make Photovoltaic Cells More Efficient
The point here is that the two innovations illustrate the importance of specialisation, something economic theory has long recognised, (Remember Adam Smith and his pin factory, see Adam Smith’s Pin Factory). But alas the importance of specialisation is too often forgotten. Ideas build on ideas, and we end up with major breakthroughs. We have previously drawn a parallel to Moore’s Law, not in the literal sense of processing doubling in speed every 18 months, but more as a metaphor for how technology can see quite stunningly rapid advances. The Internet is helping, too, because the process of ideas building upon other ideas is becoming magnified.
See: The two words economists forget, for more on this.
But the real point is this. The more we try to do something the better we get. Cynics who say we are doomed because we are running out of oil, are missing the point. Billions of dollars have been spent on improving our ability to harness oil. For solar power, that process has only just begun.
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