Quote:
Originally posted by mr_mcrafe
In the future, I guess solar power or something. There's that possibility of a giant solar power station in space that beams down power to Earth, without the atmosphere in the way to weaken all the solar rays.
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Even if we go into orbit and have perfect solar panels, and perfect method of transmitting that energy back to earth, its still only possible to get around 1.4 kW/m^2 out of solar panels. In imperial units, that's a whopping 2 horsepower for a panel 3 ftx3ft square. The world's energy will never be supplied from orbit in this way. *Maybe* a huge array on the moon, but that's way way into the future. By that time, fusion should work, which is very efficient, and essentially non-polluting (unlike fission).
Hydrogen cars will put out water, but water is a much more natural component of our atmosphere than all the stuff that comes out of normal cars. At least if we get the hydrogen from water, we're not adding anything new to the atmosphere. We're changing its distribution, though, which will have some consequences. The larger problem (as mentioned) is producing the hydrogen.
Another thing to note is that "renewable energy" also has environmental consequences. If we relied heavily on, say, wind power, weather systems would probably change dramatically. We'd also have a lot of dead birds. You can't take energy out of a system without changing it.
All things have consequences, but its kind of pointless for us to argue here which ones are more worrying. I don't think any of us here have real data to back up the claims of which energy source is "better" than another (myself included).