Tomorrow’ s World:
elemental energy earth
fire
air
water
Feature by Melissa Sterry Design by Simon Bottrell
The Large Helical Device tinyurl.com/TWfusion
Nevada Solar One Collector www.solargenix.com
That energy is a fundamental human need, even for primitive living, is without question. For the modern world it is absolutely essential. With the looming threats of fossil fuel depletion and climate change the race is now on to find effective sustainable alternatives. Melissa Sterry, director of think tank www.societas.ltd.uk explores the possible options.
5. SOLAR POWER Though 150 million kM away, up to 1 kW per square meter of power reaches the Earth’s surface from the Sun. If we harvested it all, the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth’s surface in one hour is enough to power the entire world for a year. There are two primary ways we can collect that power: Photovoltaics (PV) and Concentrated Solar technologies. Parabolic Trough, Parabolic Dish and Power Tower are the common forms of the latter and each technology uses mirrors to focus sunlight onto central receivers. PV involves light falling on a solar panel, where the photons from sunlight knock electrons into a higher state of energy, creating electricity. The global market for PV is growing at around 40% per year, driving down prices due to both new technologies and mass production.
4. NUCLEAR POWER Cold Fusion Publicly many scientific institutions discredit Cold Fusion, now more commonly referred to as Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (CMNS) or Solid State Fusion. However, since the first claims made for it 20 years ago, research has quietly continued. Though experiments have only achieved mixed results it’s possible that it could be a very cheap, abundant, non-polluting, radiation-free energy source.
A pioneering PV concept is Ross Lovegrove’s Solar Tree, which is a street lighting system with ‘branches’ that follow the sun. They also respond and adapt to the architectural environment and the weather, escaping shadows and following the sun to optimize energy generation. Another revolutionary PV technology is Californian company Cool Earth’s concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) system. Literally reshaping solar energy their inflated solar concentrators are shaped like balloons and are primarily made of inexpensive materials.
Hot Fusion This involves replicating the process of the Sun. Sounds scary but as the amount of fuel (plasma) used at any time is very small a ‘chain reaction’ can’t occur and, as there is no radioactive waste, this makes Hot Fusion a potentially safe, clean and virtually limitless energy source.
sustainedmagazine.com
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