Sun setting over the Gulf Coast
The BP Oil Spill is spurring discussions on a number of levels – perhaps most importantly with respect to renewable energy. A new webite, www.solarspill.com is encouraging solar energy alternatives in response to the gulf oil spill disaster.
Created by a group of Florida business people, solarspill.com aims to educate the public about the tremendous solar energy potential. As stated on the site:
The sun “spills” enough energy onto the Earth every 4 minutes to make electricity to meet the needs of the current world population. It is time for solar energy to play a leading role and stop being the under-funded and under-developed understudy.
Instead of continuing to feed our energy needs with dangerous, polluting oil, we could – and should – turn to abundant solar energy alternatives. Enough solar electricity could be generated by covering existing commercial rooftops in America with existing solar technology to address more than 1/3 of our energy demands. If we did so, we’d be ahead of the curve with respect to many states’ renewable portfolio standards that require a certain percentage of electricity to be generated by renewable energy by specified deadlines (for example, California’s renewable portfolio standard requires 33% of its energy to be from renewable sources by the year 2020).
When will solar panels on rooftops become the norm?
According to Yann Brandt of Advanced Green Technologies in Fort Lauderdale, even though its not realistic to expect that 100% of our energy could be from solar power,
“the premise that solar energy cannot play a large role is a falsehood. We could use today’s technology and cover 9,500 square miles of land with solar panels and produce the earth’s electric needs, this area represents about 8% of the New Mexico land and the size of the BP oil spill slick as of May 21st.”
Solar spill.com hopes to raise awareness about the possibilities of solar energy alternatives. I cannot imagine that anyone would believe we can afford another BP oil spill.
Visit www.solarspill.com or www.agt.com for current information, studies, and links concerning solar energy. The site will feature frequent updates of solar energy possibilities compared to the amount of oil spilled in the gulf from the BP disaster.
Tags: gulf oil spill, oil spill, oil spill gulf, response BP oil spill, solar electricity, solar energy alternatives, solar energy potential, solar spill
[...] Let’s start spurring more people onto clean, renewable energy options like solar! The BP Oil Spill (perhaps not ironically) has been an impetus towards more solar energy installations just in the [...]