THE FREE MARKET RESPONDS TO INCREASED DEMAND: ECONOMIC RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES MAKE REMARKABLE ADVANCES

THE ANSWER IS BLOWIN' IN THE WIND: WIND POWER news here and here and here - and that's just from today!

EFFICIENT/COST-EFFECTIVE SOLAR CELLS!

SUN, RUST AND NANOTECHNOLOGY:

Researchers in Switzerland have demonstrated more-efficient water-splitting solar cells based on a cheap, abundant, and long-lasting material: rust. The advance could lead to a cheap and energy-efficient way to generate hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles using solar energy.

Water-splitting solar panels would have important advantages over existing technologies in terms of hydrogen production. Right now, the primary way to make hydrogen is to separate it from natural gas, a process that generates carbon dioxide and undercuts the main motivation for moving to hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles: ending dependence on fossil fuels. The current alternative is electrolysis, which uses electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, with the two gases forming at opposite electrodes. Although electrolysis is costly, it can be cleaner if the source of the electricity is wind, sun, or some other carbon-free source.

But if the source of the electricity is the sun, it would be much more efficient to use solar energy to produce hydrogen by a photochemical process inside the cell itself.

RTWT.

All this just proves that technology financed by a private sector motivated by profits will solve "the energy problem" by supplying our need for alternative energy sources. No surprise here: THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT FREE MARKETS ALWAYS DO.