Alternative Energy Sources Need Development

Copenhagen will prove to be an exercise as a world wide gathering of vested political interests. They will all argue they are there to get the best deal possible for their individual countries but if you think about it for two seconds, it comes down to getting re-elected for another political term on the basis of having performed well for their country. But what about the rest of us in the world?

We, the people on planet earth, need change desperately. We all have to find new energy systems and we all have to stop polluting our planet. Somehow, climate change became the catch cry when what the people of the world are asking for, is to clean up the pollution we all see around us that is affecting our environments and life quality.

Somehow, this pollution business got hijacked into climate warming and then into climate change and big money vested interests. And not one iota of pollution is being cleaned up; no big polluters are being called to account to fix up their mess and still old growth forests are being logged at a great rate of destruction. So what can we all do?

Firstly, for all of us who are lucky enough to live in a democracy, call on our respective elected members to fix the problem. If that doesn't work, then we go to the Governments opposition to get them to hold our elected governing parties to better account. Arm all Governments oppositions with our objections to Government policies we are unhappy with, and express our opinions and needs to clean up our own respective environments in our localities.

To date, traditional print media who once used to scrutinise all Governments, has been remarkably remiss in accurate and investigative reporting on this vital problem. Why? Could it be because they are such a big polluter with their paper products?

No matter what our Governments will legislate, eventually it will all come down to us the people to do or implement anyway, so why don't we make a start from our end, the grass roots level, and the ones who elect these would-be "permanent pollies" into or out of Government, and start cleaning up our own environments first? This will show our elected officials that we are determined to fix and influence our world in a positive way and scare them into giving us what we want instead of just accepting whatever they are prepared to let us have.

Why has all our power/electricity supplies been centralised anyway? Big money, smaller infrastructure costs, but if we are to get clean energy in our environments, we need to have the power generated locally. Why? Because one of the features of electricity is that it can't be transported over long distances. These massive big transformer power lines that we see all over our landscapes are actually losing about 20% of the energy into the surrounding environment.

Cancer clusters have been found in people who live near these transformer power lines. Over the years there have been innumerable studies carried out to see if those people who get cancer and live near one of these power lines is affected adversely from them. To my knowledge, no clear link has been established but the coincidence is too high for me to believe these studies haven't been influenced by vested interest groups.

Alternative energy supplies are available in all our local communities if we can gee-up our local political members to do something about establishing them locally. Solar power for Australia is available everywhere and to my way of thinking it's a good idea to use part of the problem as part of the solution. But one should never put all one's eggs in the same basket.

We all need alternative energy supplies so we are no longer held captive by energy hijackers. One of the reasons why energy supplies are increasing in costs so rapidly is because there's nothing to stop the power corporations from increasing their costs and blaming it all on production costs caused by global warming. These energy corporations are all saying that here in Australia we are all using too much power with air-conditioning units. The big power corporations in the northern hemisphere are probably upping the costs too and blaming it all on climate change as well.

So regardless of the outcome of the climate change conference in Copenhagen we all need to have access to alternative and affordable energy supplies and a less polluted world.

Photovoltaic Social Solutions

In todays world where photovoltaic cells represent a new energy resource and are desperately being researched and developed by western countries, energy sources have always been needed in socially challenged third world countries. Here is  where the people have either had no electricity or have had a very intermittent and disrupted electricity supply. 

Photovoltaic research and development needs are a lot of sun obviously to fine tune and improve the technology and if there is one thing that many of these third world countries have in common is an abundance of sunshine. In fact, they have so much sunshine in many of the countries that this is one of the many causes of their social problems. Sunshine in excess is a killer of humans and animals because of dried up water supplies and inadequate food production caused by drought.

Without adequate clean drinking water for human consumption and enough water for  food production, many of these countries are now facing wars and famine on a scale unknown in human history.

One German company, Schott  Solar, has undertaken Corporate projects in  many of these undeveloped countries and has supplied them with a reliable supply of solar electricity and other important development projects to help these countries develop agricultural projects and to improve living conditions. They have done this by donating and installing solar power to hospitals and schools and to provide electricity to power water pumps to pump water from beneath the ground to drought stricken fields.

Not only are Schott Solar assisting development in places like Tanzania and Senegal, they are doing it in such a way that these solar power modules are suitable for recycling at some time in the future as technology improves or is replaced. The recycling of these raw materials will make for great environmental savings at some point in the future. Earths resources are finite and this is just starting to become obvious to some western countries faster than others.

PV or Photovoltaic solar power is suitable for many countries around the world and those countries who have a surfeit of sunshine would be financially and morally irresponsible not to make better use of the sunshine that pours down on them every day and is currently one of the major causes of their social problems.

Anytime the cause of a problem can be turned into the solution needs support and photovoltaic technology still has a long way to go with research and further development. The German company Schott Solar have been  researching and developing solar technology now for 51 years and they are considered the world leaders in photovoltaic technology.