36 Gigawatts Average

clipped from chizumatic.mee.nu In order for "alternate energy" to become feasible, it has to satisfy all of the following criteria: 1. It has to be huge (in terms of both energy and power) 2. It has to be reliable (not intermittent or unschedulable) 3. It has to be concentrated (not diffuse) 4. It has to be possible to utilize it efficiently 5. The capital investment and operating cost to utilize it has to be comparable to existing energy sources If it fails to satisfy any of those, then it can't scale enough to make any difference. Solar power fails #3, and currently it also fails #5. (It also partially fails #2, but there are ways to work around that.) The only sources of energy available to us now that satisfy all five are petroleum, coal, hydro, and nuclear. My rule of thumb is that I'm not interested in any "alternate energy" until someone shows me how to scale it to produce at least 1% of our current energy usage. America right now uses about 3.6 terawatts average, so 1% of that is about 36 gigawatts average.