Ray Kurzweil, futurist, predicted that humanity will be able to meet our energy needs with just 1/10,000th of the sunlight falling on Earth in an article in the Guardian in Feb 2008. Is this still true in 2023?
Yes, it is. The solar energy potential is vast compared to the world energy demand. Sunshine baths the Earth with over twice the energy per hour that the planet’s population consumes in a year. Earth receives an average of about 439 terawatts (TW) of solar energy per hour, enough to power two Earth’s for a year at 178 TW total Earth power consumption per year.
Capturing that power, however, converting it into something useful and then storing it poses a challenge.
“We only need to capture one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth to meet 100% of our energy needs,” said Ray Kurzweil, a renowned futurologist and a member of the NAE expert group, in a presentation at the AAAS. “This will become feasible with nanoengineered solar panels and nanoengineered fuel cells to store the energy in a highly decentralised manner.” {Guard}
Long term, the suns output will continue to increase. In fact, that poses a currently unsolvable problem for our survival. Over the next 1 billion years, our sun’s output is expected to increase by 10%. {TheConv} While this may not sound like much, it is enough to boil away the oceans. Having more or less time than this is currently debated by various scientists.
In the shorter term, solar energy will continue to increase, on average, by about 4.39 Megawatts (MB) per year. This assumes 439 TW /hour and a 0.00000001% increase per year, given the statement that the increase will be 10% over 1 billion years. A smooth increase is just an assumption, and may be incorrect.
With 9,125 hours in each year (365 days * 24 hrs/day), that is a 40,058.75 megawatt (0.04 TW) increase of additional solar radiation that will be hitting the earth per year, on average.
The game, then, is clear. We must increase our use of solar energy as rapidly as possible to be able to shield the planet and then get off of the Earth before it fries. Being able to do this in a timely manner depends on the pace of technological advances as well as the sun not sending us back to the stone ages with a micronova, CME or solar flare. Now that you know goal, do what you personally can to further it, for your species.
Have a nice day.