Comments on: MIT Report on Solar Energy

By: Andrew'

Andrew' — Fri, 08 May 2015 08:37:48 +0000

Those things are mostly research areas. I don’t know how to do it, but I do think we should have a lot of low cost, high labor projects on the shelf for Keynesian purposes during recessions.

For example, add current tech solar panels to government buildings or convert government vehicles to natural gas.

By: Andrew'

Andrew' — Fri, 08 May 2015 07:54:47 +0000

I propose we do one thing. A revenue-neutral carbon tax. The automatic neutral offset, an individual tax credit, hopefully means that by having to reduce progressive taxes the climate liberals won’t go crazy mis-pricing the carbon tax. Or at least it should slow them down. I realize they can just tweak the brackets to maintain progressivity and increase income taxes along with the carbon tax, but those are slow debates to have.

By: Andrew'

Andrew' — Fri, 08 May 2015 01:54:32 +0000

Just like medicine, a bunch if treatment options isn’t a good thing. It means they don’t know what they are doing.

By: Lord

Lord — Thu, 07 May 2015 17:00:55 +0000

Infrastructure doesn’t have be roads and bridges. Solar, batteries, fiber, wireless, are all rich areas for investment.

By: Jeff R.

Jeff R. — Thu, 07 May 2015 15:58:58 +0000

Politics is not about policy; green energy programs are not about green energy.

By: Handle

Handle — Thu, 07 May 2015 14:01:44 +0000

Gizmodo has a relook at some Scientific American predictions from 10 years ago. Many are pretty risible with the advantage of hindsight. There are a lot of “still working on it” comments, which, like trying to produce electricity from Nuclear Fusion, has always been 20 years away, for 70 years now. Here’s the solar section:

Solar Cells

Prediction: Solar panels that absorb infrared light

Still working on it.

Prediction: More efficient dye-based solar cells

Still working on it.

Prediction: Hybrid solar cell that generates and stores electricity

Still working on it.

Prediction: Storing solar energy in hydrogen fuel

Hydrogen Solar, the British company that announced a 10-fold improvement in making hydrogen fuel back in 2005, has been renamed Stored Solar, which seems now to exist only as a shell of a website. The idea of solar energy hydrogen fuel is still around, though, and guess what? They’re still working on it.

We should note, though, that while these new ways of making solar cells have not yet made it to market, solar energy hasn’t been a total dud. …