|
Solar Facts
The sun strikes every square meter of our planet with more than 1,360 watts of power. Half of that energy is absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected back into space, 700 watts of power on average reaches Earth’s surface. Summed across the half of the Earth that the sun is shining on, that is 89 petawatts of power. By comparison, all of human civilization uses around 15 terrawatts of power, or one six-thousandth as much. In 14 and a half seconds, the sun provides as much energy to Earth as humanity uses in a day.
The numbers are staggering and surprising. In 88 minutes, the sun provides as much energy as humanity consumes in a year. In less than five days it provides 36 zettajoules of energy as much energy as is contained in all proven reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas on earth.
If humanity could capture one tenth of one percent of the solar energy striking the earth we would have access to six times as much energy as we consume in all forms today, with almost no greenhouse gas emissions. At the current rate of energy consumption increase about 1 percent per year, we will not be using that much energy for another 180 years.
From the sun will solve a lot of problems such as pollution emissions from the burning of fossil fuel and the cost of using a finite resource will be greatly reduced. |
|