The History of Solar Energy

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make this lecture on a local professor’s new book: Let It Shine: The 6000-Year Story of Solar Energy.  But I feel like I learned a lot just reading the abstract, e.g., the work the early civilizations did with passive solar.  Dr. Perlin asks: “If years ago people successfully harnessed the sun’s energy, can’t we, with a far superior tool kit, do better, using their work as our foundation?”

The response is complicated by the fact that the world’s population is 35 times what it was during the Roman Empire, and the power consumed per capita in the developed countries is 110 times what it was back them; together; that’s huge.  But the ultimate answer is yes.  We do have the capabilities to become what physicist Michio Kaku refers to as a “Class One Civilization,” i.e., one that reaps its energy from its star, which requires that we find a way to harvest only 1/6000th of the total radiant energy we’re receiving from the sun — a formidable but accomplishable task.