Egypt: What Future for a Country in Distress?

 

Cairo in 2023: crowded, noisy, and polluted. These notes are not supposed to be an exhaustive description of the situation in Egypt, but just an impression from about one week spent there. 

When you arrive in Cairo from Europe, the heat and the humidity are the first surprise. Yes, you know that you are in an African country, and you would expect it to be hotter than Europe. Yet, it is late October; is it possible that it is still so hot? Then, what would August be like here?

It may be just a mistaken impression of someone who has never visited Egypt before, but as you speak with the local people, you discover that it is not just an impression; they share the same sensation. This October is abnormally hot; not the way it used to be. The polls show that Egyptians clearly understand the problem of climate change. Possibly, even better than Europeans, with 92% of Egyptians stating that climate change is already facing their everyday life. The fact that they are used to a hot climate doesn't mean that they don't share the same physical limits of all human being. Life becomes impossible, or at least very hard, once some temperatures are reached. 

So, what are the Egyptians doing? Of course, normal life in the heat of summer is possible only with air conditioning. I haven't been able to find statistics for the diffusion of air conditioning in Egypt, but even buildings that look poor and in bad shape have the external units of AC devices well visible on the outer walls. You see a typical example here, in the island of Zamalek, central Cairo. These are buildings probably built during Nasser's presidency, inspired by Soviet architecture. 

Yet, if you tour Cairo, you won't see a single PV panel roofs. Over several days there, I couldn't detect a single electric car running, and Google Maps tells me that there are only about 20 public recharge stations in Cairo. Not many for a city of more than 20 million inhabitants and some 5 million cars. As you may imagine, in Egypt, everything is based on fossil fuels, and Cairo is one of the most polluted cities in the world. You can hardly find a single tree in the avalanche of concrete that covers everything. 

Clearly, Egypt has serious problems. One is that the population is still exploding and shows little sign of going through the "demographic transition" that will eventually stop its growth. Then, despite its agricultural tradition, Egypt imports about 50% of its grain supply from abroad, mainly from Russia and Ukraine. You see how horrible the situation could easily become in the near future. And the problems are already there. People are not starving in Egypt, but they already have to adapt to a diet that's far from optimal. Because of excess carbohydrates and pollution, Egypt has a serious problem with obesity and with diabetes, that affects nearly 20% of the population. 

So, what can you expect for the future of Egypt, among the problems of mineral depletion and increased warming? Among the positive factors, one is that Egypt does face a problem of water scarcity as most Middle-Eastern countries. Its supply of freshwater does not depend on rain but on the Nile, for its water supply. It is nearly impossible to imagine a climate situation in which the Nile would dry up and, if carefully managed, it can still keep Egypt alive as it has done for thousands of years. 

Then, Egypt is a well-insolated country with excellent possibilities for solar energy production, both on rooftops and in the desertic areas. Up to now, PV plants have been too expensive for Egyptian families, while the government has remained locked to the obsolete fossil fuel paradigm -- just like most governments in the world have been. But things are changing. PV costs are plummeting, while Egypt has a significant fraction of the population that's well educated and sensible to the need for sustainable energy. A good example is the Heliopolis Sustainability University (the "Sekem") where young Egyptians are trained for a sustainable future. During my visit, I noted a remarkable interest in these matters, and it is not too late for Egypt to catch up with the rest of the world and become a renewable energy powerhouse. 

So, the future is uncertain but not necessarily bad for Egypt. It will take courage, good planning, and sacrifices, but, more than all, peace. And there is no doubt that peace is what most Egyptians desire. You have to spend just a few days there to understand that. And we move toward the future, always remembering that God knows best. 

Our Photovoltaic Future: The Metabolic Revolutions of Earth's History.

 

Illustration from a paper by Olivia Judson on "Nature Ecology & Evolution (2017) "The Energy Expansions of Evolution." 

This is a post that I published on "Cassandra's Legacy" in 2017. I think it anticipated the spirit of the new blog "The Sunflower Paradigm," so it is worth republishing it here with some modifications. 

Olivia Judson published an interesting paper on "Nature Ecology & Evolution." It is a cavalcade along 4 billion years of the history of the Earth, seeing it in terms of five "metabolic revolutions." That is, the complex system that's Earth's ecosystem (the great holobiont) has been evolving by exploiting and dissipating higher and higher potentials. 

It is an approach that goes in parallel with a paper that I wrote a few years ago on BERQ; even though I focussed on the future rather than on the past. But my paper was very much along the same lines, noting how some of some of the major discontinuities in the Earth's geological record are caused by metabolic changes. That is, Earth changes as the life inhabiting it "learns" how to exploit the potential gradients offered by the environment: geochemical energy at the very beginning and, later on, solar energy.

Seen in these terms, the Earth system is a gigantic autocatalytic reaction that was ignited some four billion years ago when the planet became cool enough to have liquid water on its surface. Since then, it has been flaring in a slow-motion explosion that has been going faster and faster for billions of years, until it is literally engulfing the whole planet, sending offshoots to other planets of the solar system and even outside it.

Starting from the weak geochemical energy in the depths of the oceans, the ecosystem moved to the surface to use the much more energetic light of the sun. It stepped up its capability to process sunlight by developing an oxygen-powered metabolism, then it moved onto the land surface in the form of complex organisms. Some 500 million years ago, fire appeared, although it played only a marginal role in the metabolic machine of the ecosystem. Only during the past few tens of thousands of years, has one species, humans, managed to use fire to complement its metabolic energy process.  

Judson correctly identifies the ability to control fire as the latest feature of this ongoing explosion. Fire is a characteristic ability of human beings, and can be argued that it is the defining feature of the latest time subdivision of the planet's history: the Anthropocene.

Judson stops with fire, calling it "a source of energy" and proposing that "The technology of fire may also, perhaps, mark an inflection point for the Solar System and beyond. Spacecraft from Earth may, intentionally or not, take Earthly life to other celestial objects." Here, I think the paper goes somewhat astray. Calling fire a "source" of energy is not wrong, but we need to distinguish whether we intend fire as the combustion of wood, which humans have been using for more than a million years, or the combustion of fossil hydrocarbons, used only during the past few centuries. There is a big difference: wood fires could never take humans to contemplate the idea of expanding beyond their planetary boundaries. But fossil energy could fuel this expansion at most for a few centuries, and this big fire is already on its way to exhaustion. If the Anthropocene is to be based on fossil fuels, it is destined to fade away rather rapidly.

Does this mean that we have reached the peak of the great metabolic cycle of planet Earth? Not necessarily so. Judson seems to miss in her paper that the next metabolic revolution has already started: it is called photovoltaic conversion, and it is a way to transform solar energy into an electric potential coupled with the capability of controlling the motion of electrons in solid-state conductors. It is a big step beyond fire and thermal machinery (*). It is, by all means, a new form of metabolism (**). It is generating a new ecology of silicon-based life forms, as I discussed in a previous post that I titled "Five Billion Years of Photovoltaic Energy." 

So, we are living in interesting times, something that we could take as a curse. But it is not a choice that we are facing: we are entering a new era, not necessarily a good thing for humans, but most likely an unavoidable change; whether we like it or not may be of little importance. It is a new discontinuity in the billion years long history of planet Earth that will lead to an increased capability of capturing and dissipating the energy coming from the sun.

The great chemical reaction is still flaring up, and its expansion is going to take us somewhere far away, even though, at present, we can't say where. A new lifeform just appeared in the Earth's ecosystem: it is called "photovoltaic cell." Where it will bring us, or whatever will come after us, is impossible to say, but it could take us to realms that, right now, we can't even imagine.




(*) The Jews have been arguing for about a century whether electricity has to be considered a form of fire and therefore prohibited during the Sabbath. It is surely an interesting theological discussion, but for what I can say (theology is not my field), fire (a hot plasma ignited in air) is not the same as electricity (controlled movement of electrons in solids)

(**) The supporters of nuclear energy may argue that the next metabolic revolution should be seen as the production of energy from nuclear fission or fusion. The problem is that the resources of fissionable material in the whole solar system are small and they could hardly fuel a truly new geological epoch. As for fusion, we haven't found a technology able to control it in such a way to make it an earth-based source of energy, and it may very well be that such a technology doesn't exist. But, in the sun, fusion works very well, so why bother?

The Growth of Photovoltaic Energy Continues!

 

Given the rapid advance of photovoltaic energy during the past few years, I think it is appropriate to repropose a post that I published some years ago on "Cassandra's Legacy" -- it was an easy prophecy to make, but it is a satisfaction to see that it is coming true. If we keep going at the current rate, in a couple of decades, fossil fuels will be memory, just like steam locomotives. 

From "Cassandra's Legacy"

Monday, August 15, 2016

Five billion years of energy supply: the "stereosphere" and the upcoming photovoltaic revolution

It seems to be popular nowadays to maintain that photovoltaic energy is just an "extension" of fossil energy and that it will fade away soon after we run out of fossils fuels. But photovoltaics is much more than just a spinoff of fossil energy, it is a major metabolic revolution in the ecosystem, potentially able to create a "stereosphere" analogous to the "biosphere" that could last as long as the remaining lifetime of the earth's ecosystem and possibly much more. Here are some reflections of mine, not meant to be the last word on the subject, but part of an ongoing study that I am performing. You can find more on a similar subject in a paper of mine on Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality, (BERQ)

"Life is nothing but an electron looking for a place to rest," is a sentence attributed to Albert Szent-Györgyi. It is true: the basis of organic life as we know it is the result of the energy flow generated by photosynthesis. Sunlight promotes an electron to a high energy state in the molecule of chlorophyll. Then, the excited electron comes to rest when a CO2 molecule reacts with hydrogen stripped away from an H2O molecule in order to form the organic molecules that are the basis of biological organisms. That includes replacing degraded chlorophyll molecules and the chloroplasts that contain them with new ones. The cycle is called "metabolism" and it has been going on for billions of years on the earth's surface. It will keep going as long as there is sunlight to power it and there are nutrients that can be extracted from the environment. 

But, if life means using light to excite an electron to a higher energy state, there follows that chlorophyll is not the only entity that can do that. In the figure at the beginning of this post, you see the solid state equivalent of a chlorophyll molecule: a silicon-based photovoltaic cell. It promotes an electron to a higher energy state; then this electron finds rest after having dissipated its potential by means of chemical reactions or physical processes. That includes using the potentials generated to manufacturing new photovoltaic cells and the related structures to replace the degraded ones. In analogy with the biological metabolism, we could call this process "solid state metabolism". Then, the similarities between the carbon-based metabolic chain and the silicon-based one are many. So much that we could coin the term "stereosphere" (from the Greek term meaning "solid.") as the solid-state equivalent of the well known "biosphere". Both the biosphere and the stereosphere use solar light as the energy potential necessary to keep the metabolic cycle going and they build-up metabolic structures using nutrients taken from the earth's surface environment.

The main nutrient for the biosphere is CO2, taken from the atmosphere, while the stereosphere consumes SiO2, taking it from the geosphere. Both metabolic chains use a variety of other nutrients: the stereosphere can reduce the oxides of metals such as aluminum, iron, and titanium, and use them as structural or functional elements in their metallic form; whereas the biosphere can only use carbon polymers. The biosphere stores information mostly in specialized carbon-based molecules called deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA). The stereosphere stores it mostly in silicon-based components called "transistors". Mechanical enactors are called "muscles" in the biosphere and are based on protein filaments that contract as a consequence of changing chemical potentials. The equivalent mechanical elements in the stereosphere are called "motors" and are based on the effects of magnetic fields on metallic elements. For each element of one of these systems, it is possible to find a functional equivalent of the other, even though their composition and mechanisms of operation are normally completely different.

A major difference in the two systems is that the biosphere is based on microscopic self-reproducing cells. The stereosphere, instead, has no recognizable cells and the smallest self-reproducing unit is something that could be defined as the "self-reproducing solar plant factory." A factory that can build not only solar plants but also new solar plant factories. Obviously, such an entity includes a variety of subsystems for mining, refining, transporting, processing, assembling, etc. and it has to be very large. Today, all these elements are embedded in the system called the "industrial system." (also definable as the "technosphere"). This system is powered, at present, mainly by fossil fuels but, in the future, it would be transformed into something fully powered by the dissipation of solar energy potentials. This is possible as long as the flow of energy generated by the system is as large or larger than the energy necessary to power the metabolic cycle. This requirement appears to be amply fulfilled by current photovoltaic technologies (and other renewable ones).

A crucial question for all metabolic processes is whether the supply of nutrients (i.e. minerals) can be maintained for a long time. About the biosphere, evidently, that's the case: the geological cycles that reform the necessary nutrients are part of the concept of "Gaia", the homeostatic system that has kept the biosphere alive for nearly four billion years. About the stereosphere, most of the necessary nutrients are abundant in the earth's crust (silicon and aluminum being the main ones) and easily recoverable and recyclable if sufficient energy is available. Of course, the stereosphere will also need other metals, several of which are rare in the earth's crust, but the same requirement has not prevented the biosphere from persisting for billions of years. The geosphere can recycle chemical elements by natural processes, provided that they are not consumed at an excessively fast rate. This is an obviously complex issue and we cannot exclude that the cost of recovering some rare element will turn out to be a fundamental obstacle to the diffusion of the stereosphere. At the same time, however, there is no evidence that this will be the case.

So, can the stereosphere expand on the earth's surface and become a large and long-lasting metabolic cycle? In principle, yes, but we should take into account a major obstacle that could prevent this evolution to occur. It is the "Allee effect" well known for the biosphere and that, by similarity, should be valid for the stereosphere as well. The idea of the Allee effect is that there exists  a minimum size for a biological population that allows it to be stable and recover from perturbations. Too few individuals may not have sufficient resources and reciprocal interactions to avoid extinction after a collapse. In the case of the stereosphere, the Allee effect means that there is a minimum size for the self-reproducing solar plant factory that will allow it to be self-sustaining and long-lasting. Have we reached the "tipping point" leading to this condition? At present, it is impossible to say, but we cannot exclude that it has been reached or that it will be reached before the depletion of fossil fuels will bring the collapse of the current industrial system.

The next question is whether a self-sustaining stereosphere can coexist with the organic biosphere. According to Gause's law, well known in biology, two different species cannot coexist in the same ecological niche; normally one of the two must go extinct or be marginalized. Solid state and photosynthetic systems are in competition with each other for solar light. There follows that the stereosphere could replace the biosphere if the efficiency of solid state transduction systems were to turn out higher than that of photosynthetic systems. But this is not obvious. PV cells today appear to be more efficient than photosynthetic plants in terms of the fraction of solar energy processed but we need to consider the whole life cycle of the systems and, at present, a reliable assessment is difficult. We should take into account, anyway, that solid state creatures don't need liquid water, don't need oxygen, are not limited to local nutrients, and can exist in a much wider range of temperatures than biological ones. It means that the stereosphere can expand to areas forbidden to the biosphere: dry deserts, mountaintops, polar deserts, and more. Silicon based creatures are also scarcely affected by ionizing radiation, so they can survive in space without problems. These considerations suggest that the stereosphere may occupy areas and volumes where it is not in direct competition with the biosphere.

The characteristics of the stereosphere also allow it the capability of surviving catastrophes that may deeply damage the biosphere and that will eventually cause its extinction. For instance, the stereosphere could survive an abrupt climate change (although not a "Venus Catastrophe" of the kind reported by James Hansen). Over the long run, in any case, the earth's biosphere is destined to be sterilized by the increasing intensity of the solar irradiation over times of the order of a billion years. (and smaller for multicellular organisms). The stereosphere would not be affected by this effect and could continue existing for the five billion of years in which the sun will remain in the main sequence. Possibly, it could persist for much longer, even after the complex transformations that would lead the sun to become a white dwarf. A white dwarf could, actually power PV systems perhaps for a trillion years!

A more detailed set of considerations of mine on a related subject can be found in this article on "Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality, BERQ). 

Notes: 

1. I am not discussing here whether the possible emergence of the stereosphere is a good or a bad thing from the viewpoint of humankind. It could give us billions of years of prosperity or lead us to rapid extinction. It seems unlikely, anyway, that humans will choose whether they want to have it or not on the basis of rational arguments while they still have the power to decide something on the matter. 

2. The concept of a terrestrial metabolic system called the stereosphere is not equivalent, and probably not even similar, to the idea of the "technological singularity" which supposes a very fast increase of artificial intelligence. The "self-reproducing solar plant factory" needs not be more intelligent than a bacterium; it just needs to store a blueprint of itself and instructions about replication. Intelligence is not necessarily useful for survival, as humans may well discover to their chagrin in the near future.

3. About the possibility of a photovoltaic-powered Dyson sphere around a white dwarf, see this article by Ibrahim Semiz and Salim O˘gur.

4. The idea of "silicon-based life" was popularized perhaps for the first time by Stanley Weinbaum who proposed his "Pyramid Monster" in his short story "A Martian Odissey" published in 1933. Weinbaum's clumsy monster could not exist in the real universe, but it was a remarkable insight, nevertheless. 

The Miracle of Renewables

 

This is the translation (slightly retouched) of an article that I published in the Italian Newspaper "Il Fatto Quotidiano." Apart from a few insults from the usual people, it was a remarkable success. I had many favorable comments, personal contacts, and question on how to move on, in practice, to install renewable plants and produce energy. 

From "Il Fatto Quotidiano" Oct, 8, 2022 

By Ugo Bardi 

We all know that miracles are not so common and, if you have a major health problem, it is not likely that a little swim in the pool at Lourdes will be enough to solve it. However, it is also true that sometimes things change quickly, opening up new possibilities. That is what is happening with renewable energy. To speak of a "miracle" is too much, I know, but recent developments in technology have made available to us a tool that until a few years ago we did not even dream of having. And this may solve problems that once seemed unsolvable.

For years, I went around lecturing about climate change and other troubles ahead, pollution, oil depletion and the like. Usually, those who attended the lectures were people who were prepared for a not-so-optimistic message, but the problem was what to do about it. At the end of the lecture, a debate would follow in which the same things were said over and over again: riding a bicycle, lowering the thermostat in the house, putting double-paned glasses on the windows, using energy-efficient light bulbs, things like that.  

It was a small reassuring ritual but, in practice, everyone knew that these were not real solutions. It's not that these things don't do any good, but they are mostly the spraying of a little green paint on a system that continues to depend on fossil fuels to function. Thus, we have been talking about double glazing and bicycles for at least 20 years, but CO2 emissions continue to rise as before, in fact, faster. Unless we get to the heart of the problem, eliminating fossil fuels, we aren't going anywhere. But how to do it? Until a few years ago, it seemed that there was no way except to go back to tilling the fields as our ancestors did during the Middle Ages. 

But today things have changed dramatically. You probably haven't noticed, caught up in the election debate. But whether the right or the left wins, it changes little: change, the real kind, is coming with renewable technologies. Wind and photovoltaic plants have been optimized, and factors of scale have generated massive production cost savings. Today, a kilowatt-hour produced by a photovoltaic panel costs perhaps a factor of ten less than the kilowatt-hour from natural gas (and also a fifth of the nuclear kilowatt-hour). We used to call renewable energy "alternative," but today it is all the others that are "alternative." Moreover, producing energy with renewable plants does not pollute, does not require non-recyclable materials, does not generate greenhouse gases, is not susceptible to penalties, and no one can bomb the sun to leave us without power. 

Now, don't make me say that renewables have automatically solved all the problems. It is true that they are cheap today, but it is also true that they are not free. Then, it takes investment to adapt the energy infrastructure across the country, create energy storage systems, and much more.  These are not things that can be done in a month, or even in a few years. We are talking about a decade, at a minimum, to get to an energy system based primarily on renewables. But it is also true that every journey begins with the first step. And now we see before us a road ahead. A road that leads us to a cleaner, more prosperous, and hopefully less violent world. 

I haven't stopped going around lecturing but, now, I can propose real solutions. And it is not just me who has realized the change. In the debate, today you can hear the enthusiasm that we can do something concrete. Many people ask if they can install photovoltaic panels at home. Others tell of having already done so. Some are mad (rightly so) at the bureaucracy that prevents them from installing PV panels on their roof or in their backyard. You also see the change in the discussions on social media. There is always someone who speaks against renewables by reasoning like the medieval flagellants who went around shouting "rememberthe  you must die." But there are also those who respond to them in kind, like, "so go ahead and live happily in your grotto with the other cavemen." 

If you have a south-facing balcony (and if your municipality doesn't get in your way), you can already install photovoltaic panels hanging from the railing that will help reduce your electricity bill. One little piece at a time, we will succeed!

The Solar Revolution Moves on!

https://taiyangnews.info/markets/china-installed-31-gw-solar-pv-in-h1-2022/

China Installed 31 GW Solar PV In H1/2022

by Anu Bhambhani

The China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) says during H1/2022, China installed 30.88 GW of new solar PV capacity, growing 137.4% annually over 14.1 GW reported for the same period last year (see China May Exit 2021 With Up To 65 GW New PV: CPIA).

The association counts 13.21 GW installed in Q1/2022, followed by another 17.67 GW added in Q2/2022 of the total. Cumulative installed PV capacity of the world’s largest solar market at the end of June 2022 increased to 340 GW, at the same level as wind power (see China PV News Snippets).

CPIA’s Honorary Chairman Wang Bohua said they forecast China to exit 2022 with 75 GW annual installations under a conservative scenario, and 90 GW under its optimistic scenario, which will be in any case much higher than the 54 GW installed in 2021. However, CPIA has not increased its forecast range for 2022, a level it already forecasted in Feb. 2022 (see Up To 90 GW New Solar In China In 2022). For 2023, the association predicts between 80 GW to 95 GW new installations.

Further growth can be expected during the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP) that’s supposed to run between 2021 and 2025 as 392.16 GW of total PV capacity is targeted to be installed by 25 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions during the period. CPIA specified that in the next 4 years, 344.48 GW is to be added.

Bohua also shared an update on the Chinese plan to use its desert regions including Gobi Desert to install 97.05 GW new wind and solar capacity. It said up to now, work on more than 95 GW has been started.

The association acknowledged that the market share of large size silicon wafers has expanded rapidly with some companies having converted all their production lines to produce 182mm and 210mm sized products. However, some firms have tried to replace diamond wire process with tungsten wire which the CPIA believes is expected to further refine the wire diameter and promote thinner wafers, from 165μm to 160μm.

Even in terms of module power thanks to tenders in China, 540W+ has become the mainstream product in the market, something that even EnergyTrend also pointed at in its recent report (see 80% Chinese Producers Get 210mm Capability).

Demand for n-type products is also on the rise as n-type cell expansion projects account for 1/3rd of total expansion capacity. Announced demand for n-type modules has exceeded 4 GW, which is a 4-fold increase compared to entire 2021.

The association also reiterated solar production capacity data for H1/2022 as released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) (see China’s Solar PV Production Capacity In H1/2022).

The Gold Rush of Photovoltaic Energy: scams are unavoidable, but they might not be a bad sign!

 

Recently, Fox News investigated some companies engaged in selling PV plants to individual customers. As you would have expected, there have been cases in which the customer was promised impossible results. The customer had to pay for plants that didn't work as promised or that could not be connected to the grid for lack of the needed permits. 

It is nothing new. It also happened in Italy some ten years ago, when the government provided a relatively high financial support for PV plants. That led to plenty of people to rush into the market, many of them without the necessary competence, and some being pure scammers. 

It happens every time a market starts lifting off: do you remember the story of the California gold rush of 1849? Lots of scammers would cheat in all possible ways: selling fake digging permits, selling plots where they had "planted" gold nuggets but contained none, or simply robbing the forty-niners. Bad. But is also true that the gold was there for real. 

It is the same for photovoltaic energy: it is the gold of our times. And the gold is there for real: it is the sun. Scams are just a symptom of a true "PV rush" that will lead us out of the current mess. 

The EROI of Photovoltaic Energy is now Higher than that of Crude Oil has Ever Been.

This is an article that I published today in the Italian newspaper "Il Fatto Quotidiano." As a discussion, it is not very deep -- of course, it is written for the general public and these articles have a limit of 650 words. Yet, I think not many people, even among energy specialists, have realized the silent revolution that has turned photovoltaic energy from an expensive, niche technology into something that has an EROEI higher than that of petroleum in the "golden days." Don't expect it to "replace fossil fuels," as some people would expect it to do. It is a different technology, with different capabilities, different applications, with its strong and weak points. But it is starting to change the world, and it will. 

How about hydrogen, the subject of this blog? Well, if we have cheap and abundant energy from PV, we could use hydrogen to store it. But that is an expensive storage solution and will be used (if it is ever used) when all the other possibilities have been exhausted.

 

Photovoltaic Energy is an Opportunity that the Country Should not Miss

Imagine a bank account that pays you 100% interest  That is, after you have deposited 1000 euros, it gives you another thousand euros at the end of the year, and so on every year. You would like a bank account like that!

Obviously, there is no bank account that yields so much, but there are technologies that yield at such levels, albeit not in monetary but in energy terms. There is an article published this month by Fthenakis and Leccisi which reviews the situation and finds a truly excellent yield of photovoltaic technology due to the technological improvements of the last 5-7 years. In practice, for good insolation, as we could have in Southern Europe, a photovoltaic system returns the energy needed to build it in about a year! We are now at the levels of oil during its heyday, when it was abundant and cheap, and perhaps even oil was not doing so well at that time.

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That of Fthenakis and Leccisi is not the only article that comes to this conclusion, all recent studies on the subject come to similar conclusions. A very recent article in “EDP Science” . Basically, the electricity produced by photovoltaic plants is often the cheapest in absolute terms, the growth of installations continues to exceed forecasts, and we are now talking about the "photovoltaic revolution." We face the real possibility of eliminating fossil fuels once and for all from the global energy system.

Now, I know that you are already with your fingers on the keyboard to write in the comments "but the variability?" "I don't want to see panels in front of my house!" "And how about waste ?" and things like that. I know. Everyone knows these things. However, think about that.

We have a technology that costs less than the others, and which is particularly suited to Italy, “the country of the sun.” It allows us to produce energy in our home without having to import it at a high price. We also have the added benefit of having mountains that we can use for storing  energy in the form of hydroelectric reservoirs. There are many other ways to manage variability - it's not an unsolvable problem . Then, about waste and recycling, we will have to invest in it, of course. But keep in mind that photovoltaic systems do not use rare or polluting materials. They can be recycled without major problems and we will certainly do so in the future. At the moment, it is a marginal problem.

In short, photovoltaic energy is an opportunity that we should not miss to relaunch the "country system" in Italy. And, indeed, things are going pretty well. In Italy we have reached 10% of electricity production from photovoltaic energy and it is a good result from which we can start decarbonise to truly the energy system. Certain things seem to have been understood nationally. You can read it in the "Pniec", Integrated National Plan for Energy and Climate, which provides for a fundamental role for renewable technologies, and in particular for photovoltaic energy.

But there remains a resistance rearguard formed by a rather ill-matched coalition that includes the oil companies, the diehard nuclearists, the cold fusion miracleists, those who are still paying the bills for the diesel car they bought, and, in general, a whole section of the environmental movement that rejects any change in the name of a "degrowth" thinking that we'll be happy to stay in the dark and in the cold.

To everyone their opinions but, in practice, at this point the only thing that can block the photovoltaic revolution is bureaucracy, perhaps the only truly "infinite resource" in the universe. On this point too, the government seems to be willing to do something to streamline and speed up the procedures of installation. It won't be easy, but with a little patience, we will get there.