Climate change and solar thermal power

It is now considered a scientific fact that global warming is real. It is currently happening and is largely caused by human activities. To prevent the worst impacts of global warming, the United States must take action to reduce global warming pollution quickly and dramatically. Electricity generation accounts for more than a third of America’s emissions of global warming pollution. Preventing catastrophic global warming, therefore, will require the United States to shift away from highly polluting sources of power, such as coal-fired power plants, and toward clean, renewable energy.

CSP technologies

Concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies – which use the sun’s heat to generate electricity – can make a large contribution toward reducing global warming pollution in the United States, and do so quickly and at a reasonable cost. CSP can also reduce other environmental impacts of electric power production while sparking economic development and creating jobs.

The transition away from “dirty” energy

The United States has limited time to transition away from dirty energy sources and toward clean, renewable energy. The latest climate science tells us that the United States and the world must reduce emissions of global warming pollutants quickly and dramatically to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of global warming. If global average temperatures to increase by more than 2° Celsius, scientists warn that dangerous impacts from global warming will become inevitable, including flooding of coastal cities, the loss of large numbers of plant and animal species, and increases in extreme weather, wildfire, and drought? To have a reasonable chance of preventing a 2° C increase in global average temperatures, the world must keep the concentration of global warming pollution in the atmosphere below 450 parts per million.

The U.S. needs to reduce emissions.

The United States must, at a minimum, reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 15-20 percent from 2000 levels by 2020, and by 80 percent by 2050 to prevent catastrophic impacts from global warming. Other nations must act aggressively as well. America’s electric power plants produce more carbon dioxide (the leading global warming pollutant) than the entire economy of any nation in the world other than China. Even if America uses energy efficiency improvements to prevent future growth in electricity consumption, the nation will still need to expand its renewable generating capacity dramatically. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to 20 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, for example, would require the U.S. to generate 15 to 24 percent of its electricity from new renewable sources – or between 158 GW and 257 GW of new renewable energy by 2020. The need for clean energy will further accelerate in future decades as the United States seeks to meet increasingly stringent targets for emission reductions.
Concentrating solar power is ready to reduce global warming pollution, and can begin doing so right away. America has immense potential to generate power from the sun. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has identified the potential for more than 7,000 gigawatts (GW) of solar thermal power generation on lands in the southwestern United States – more than six times current U.S. electric generating capacity.  Other sunny areas of the United States, such as the Mountain West, the Great Plains, and Florida, can also generate power from solar thermal energy.

Making the switch to solar power

If you want to move into the future and join the solar revolution, or if you want to find out what solar panels are right for you, go to HahaSmart.com and try our price checker tool. You can see how much a system will cost, and how much you can save over the next 20 years. 

For more information relating to going solar, don't forget to visit our solar blog section for more handy guides and articles.