Fossil Fuels: Rising Demand & Climatic Change Impact - Research Paper

Introduction

Over the past decades, there has been a continuous growth and development in technologies and so, the prosperity of human civilization; such that, most of these advancements have been highly dependent on energy consumptions especially from petroleum and coal, generally known as fossil energy (Lee et al., 2017). The demand for energy in the current world is ever increasing due to these technological advancements, which are highly facilitated by fossil fuels. However, climatic changes and so global warming has come in place, which now necessitates the need for usage of more environmental-friendly sources of energy since fossil fuels are sources of many environmental pollutions (Lee et al., 2017). These pollutions could be the reason for the trending global warming effects. Therefore, there is a need to find alternative sources of energy that are eco-friendly and can sustain the growth and development of many economies in the US and across the planet (Lee et al., 2017).

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Solar energy has been discovered to be one of the few alternative sources of energy, such as biomass, nuclear power, geothermal, and wind, that can replace fossil fuels (Lee et al., 2017). Solar energy has a broad scope of applications both for domestic and industrial uses, which makes it a better candidate alternative to fossil fuels and based on the fact that it is environmental-friendly since it extracts heat energy from the sun. Some of the applications of solar energy include domestic uses such as heating, solar-assisted cooking, and space and industrial applications such as drying (Lee et al., 2017). Solar energy can be utilized in several areas and fields such as; electrical energy generations, i.e., photovoltaics; reducing gases especially in greenhouses, i.e., carbon dioxide conversion to value-added chemicals; environmental remediations, i.e., photocatalytic degradation of pollutants and finally, producing clean fuels such as hydrogen (Lee et al., 2017).

In attempts to utilize large-scale solar energy that is efficient and reliable, material properties are of great essence in the maximum absorption of visible light. Therefore, there is the need for combining materials with unique properties that will offer maximum light absorption, that are less costly, nontoxic, and of earth-abundant-element compositions (Lee et al., 2017).

The Trend of Solar Energy Usages in the US

In the United States, solar energy usages, applications, and installations are on a rapidly growing scale across the entire country ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020). This is shown in the graph1 below.

Graph1: Cumulative Solar installations in the US.

Discussion on the Graph

Based on the collected data over the last decade, the average annual growth of solar energy is approximately 48% ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020). The increase is highly dependent on many factors, such as the Solar Investment Tax Credit as a federal policy. Other factors include the ever-increasing demand from the private and public sectors for solar energy, and also due to the rapid decline in solar installation costs. For this reason, solar energy production has increased rapidly and now approximated that there are 78 GW (gigawatts)of solar capacity that are installed countrywide ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020). Such a capacity is equivalent to powering up to 14.5 million households ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020).

On the Economic Scale

Solar energy in the United States is not only for domestic applications but also for industrial and commercial applications, which boosts and develops the country's economy at large. For instance, based on data and statistics, the solar energy sector has employed around 250,000 citizens that now work in the solar energy department in more than 10, 000 companies in each state of the United States ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020). This figure is equivalent to double the number of employees in the same field in 2012. Moreover, in 2019, $18 billion worth of investment was generated from the solar sector, contributing to the country's economic growth ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020). This is shown on the graph2.

Graph2: Solar industry jobs by sector.

On Falling Solar Costs

Costs involving solar energy installations have been on the decline in the last decade. This is approximated at that the drop is more than 70%, which has led to the rapid growth of the industry into new markets and, thus, nationwide ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020). Thousands of systems have been installed all over the United States. For instance, in 2010, the price of an average-sized residential solar system was about $40,000, this figure has been reduced over the decade to around $18,000 as the current price tag for the very same system ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020). Moreover, the costs for utility-scale systems range between $16/MWh and $35/MWh ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020).

On Capacity Share

Based on the most recent electrical capacity additions, the solar energy is ranked among the top two over each of the past ten years. For instance, in 2019, solar contributed up to 40% of new electricity capacity, which was added to the national grid, making it the most prominent share ever in the history of solar energy production ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020). Solar energy has become competitive in the United States to such an extent that it has overtaken other technologies in the electrical generation field, increasing its share up to over 2.5% from only about 0.1% in 2010 ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020).

On Market Growth and Expansion

In the United States, California is the known most dominant and developed in terms of solar market growth even though other markets are experiencing rapid market expansions in the same sector ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020). For example, over the last decade, other states experienced the largest market share in solar energy, which was highly contributed and elevated due to the rapid growth of Texas and Florida. Furthermore, solar energy costs are still on the decline, which means that new entrants in the states into solar installations will continue to penetrate the market as broad as across the whole country, thus into the national market ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020). The growth is shown in figure1 below.

Fig.1: Cumulative US Solar Installation by State.

On Storage

There is an increasing demand for solar storage batteries for both businesses and homeowners. They are suggesting the inclusion of storage devices into the solar systems, which will lead to more rapid growth and expansion of the solar sector in an estimated period of over the next five years ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020). This growth will not only be significant not only to the solar owners but also to the American economy at large and the environment through the minimization of pollutions due to the use of fossil energy. Solar energy is a good replacement and alternative to fossil energy, even though it has its demerits. By 2025, it is forecasted that over 25% of the solar systems (that is, behind-the-meter) will be accompanied by storage batteries which is a massive percentage as compared to less than 5% of the same systems in 2019 ("Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA", 2020).

Challenges and Obstacles Related to Solar Energy

The solar industry in the United States is experienced rapid growth; however, there are still challenges and barriers that might prevent it from ever replacing fossil energy. These factors include the power grid infrastructure in the country that has remained unchanged for almost the whole of the last century, the inefficiency in the solar systems, and the oversupply of the solar systems and panels (Team, 2016).

Based on the power grid infrastructure, and due to its unchangeability, this might hinder further technological advancements as the grid may not be equipped enough to handle renewable energy (Team, 2016). This is true since electricity cannot be stored, its flow to the national grid then through power lines for supply purposes to the whole nation and might be problematic when its demand is higher than the supply (Team, 2016). Therefore, with the inclusion of renewable energy into the grid, there will arise issues to do with the unpredictability of the amount of energy that can be generated on a given day since renewable energy is highly dependent on the ever-changing weather patterns.

Conclusion

Despite the massive growth being experienced in the solar industry, it is clear to note that it might be a problem going in the future. This is based on the reasoning that; solar energy is unpredictable and thus might delay many industrial processes in the cases when its supply is lower than what is required. However, solar energy will have a massive contribution to the efforts aimed at reducing environmental pollutions since it is ecosystem-friendly. Therefore, the best way going forward is that there should be a balance in the use of solar energy and fossil energy, as each has its own advantages as well as disadvantages. A good suggestion will be to minimize the use of fossil fuels and maximize the use of solar energy.

References

Lee, S., Vandiver, M., Viswanathan, B., & Subramanian, V. R. (2017). Harvesting Solar Energy Using Inexpensive and Benign Materials. In Handbook of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (pp. 1537-1580). Springer, Cham.

Solar Industry Research Data | SEIA. SEIA. (2020). Retrieved 14 April 2020, from https://www.seia.org/solar-industry-research-data.

Team, S. (2020). Saveonenergy.com. Retrieved 14 April 2020, from https://www.saveonenergy.com/learning-center/post/3-challenges-facing-the-solar-energy-industry/.