Green Power: The National Geographic last month had some amazing stats on green power and how amazingly little of it we are capturing. Wind is one option but solar is astronomical! A quote from the article"
"If we talk about geothermal or wind, all these other sources of renewable energy are limited in their quantity," Eicke Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in Freiburg, Germany states. "The total power needs of the humans on Earth is approximately 16 terawatts," he said. (A terawatt is a trillion watts.) "In the year 2020 it is expected to grow to 20 terawatts. The sunshine on the solid part of the Earth is 120,000 terawatts. From this perspective, energy from the sun is virtually unlimited."
So it begs the question; Why are we spending any money on gas fired plants and coal power, and nuclear seems a bit ridiculous?
This is a pretty amazing chart too when you think about it. We as a planet only need 1.9% of the potential renewable energy that is hitting/generated by the the planet.