Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
A rocket man’s view of solar energy
After nearly 25 years in the computer science and aerospace industries, including a stint at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Doug Caldwell decided to pursue a career-long dream of putting his engineering skills to use for the environment. So the Southern California native left his own start-up, a company that builds cameras for spacecraft launch systems, to explore his options.
He didn’t have to look far, or for very long. Within months Caldwell had landed work on a solar power development project, recruited by an old buddy from his days launching model rockets in the desert. Perhaps more ironic is the company he ended up working for — Boeing Co.
Two years later, Caldwell, 47, is chief engineer of the project, which employs about 60 people in a $45 million endeavor to design a new type of photovoltaic solar technology for what would be a 20-megawatt power plant.
One thing he has learned from the experience is that renewable energy development is more of a dollars-and-cents proposition than building rockets. “It’s not about engineering. It’s about business and finance,” Caldwell says.
While space science is largely mission-driven, albeit within the confines of a budget, the paramount concern for clean energy is making it cost-effective and achieving a reasonable return on one’s investment. Moreover, he says, the history of U.S. energy development, and how closely it’s tied to the economy, will make the nation’s transition to cleaner energy especially tough.
Americans, he says, are “spoiled” by cheap energy prices that fail to account for the true costs of environmental damage wrought by extracting and burning fossil fuels, or the national security implications of maintaining access to foreign oil.
“Everybody wants to be green, but no one wants to pay for it,” he says. With sizable investments required to transform the energy sector, the development of low-carbon alternatives is going to be “very dependent on public sector incentives.”
Rocket Man is definitely on the right track. The idea of taking large tracks of land to build solar farms and then tie them to a GRID and push that energy across vast distances – how stupid can we be. It’s not the use of large tracks of desert that bothers me, it’s the stupidity of pushing that energy into a grid that spans hundreds of miles into far away cities. Talk about an inefficient use of resources.
If we move to the deployment of neighborhood solar energy panels or roof top installations we not only solve the nations energy needs but we create far more jobs than going to the old grid system.
Even if the government (the tax payer) has to subsidize the development of more efficient solar panels for the next 10 years, would that not be better than sending our money over to these Middle Eastern Countries that hate us and use some of the profits to finance terrorist.
Enough energy (clean energy to boot) hits the surface of the planet everyday to power the entire world’s energy needs for the next 10 years. We need to support the efforts of individuals like the Rocket Man.
Being energy INDEPENDENT not only makes common sense, but it also makes for a more secure and peaceful world. The main reason we are in Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly Iran, in the not too distant future, is ENERGY. Plain and simple – energy.
Get off your lazy ass America and go solar!