Decolonization Models for America’s Last Colony: Puerto Rico

The Neglect of Solar Energy

187 The Neglect of Solar Energy January 31, 2008 The sun is an electricity-generating plant of gigantic dimensions that costs nothing. It is estimated that this year the sun will shed on the earth around 4,000 times more energy than we will consume. The sun is a clean, renewable, and inexhaustible source of energy. Puerto Rico has the good fortune of being on a latitude that receives solar energy throughout the year and that has short nights. However, not only do we not use this resource, but, according to a study conducted by the US Office of Energy, Puerto Rico is the country that spends the most energy per square kilometer in the whole world, and its energy expenditure is the third highest per inhabitant. Germany is in the vanguard in the use of modern technologies to produce renewable sources of energy. Since 2004, it has been the world’s top producer of energy using solar cells, surpassing Japan. Worldwide sales of solar panels grew at an annual rate of 20 percent in the 1990s. In the European Union, the average annual growth is 30 percent, and Germany has more than 80 percent of the equipment installed. Eighty-five percent of Germans see solar energy as the ideal source to replace traditional energy sources, such as crude oil, nuclear power, and carbon. In Spain, solar-power generation has already exceeded the goals set by the government for 2010. Its objective is to revise its projections so as to surpass Germany in this achievement. In 2013, Seville will be the province producing the most solar energy in the world. Some $2.5 billion will be invested to supply some 300,000 households, while reducing gas emissions. 188  Newspaper Columns The Spanish president, José Luis Rodríguez-Zapatero, has stated that “the fight against climatic change is an absolute priority for any responsible government in contemporary times, and we cannot afford to waste a single minute.” He added that climate change is the “most serious challenge threatening life on earth, and it calls for a new contract between man and nature.” The Kyoto Agreement proposes that all governments change their energy policies to give high priority to increasing the supply of clean, renewable energy sources (such as solar and wind energy) without carbon dioxide emissions. Though 174 countries have ratified the agreement, the United States has refused to join the rest of the world’s countries, even though in 1990 it was responsible for 36.1 percent of the greenhouse-gas emissions produced by industrialized countries. In an initiative separate from the rest of the country, the State of California passed legislation to invest $3.2 billion in small-scale solar-energy systems, with the objective of installing one million solar roofs within a decade, capable of producing 3,000 megawatts of solar energy. There are several powerful reasons to begin building a country based on solar energy: to help in the conservation of the planet, to eliminate or reduce expenditures on electricity by its citizens, companies, and government ; to generate income for individual citizens by collecting free energy and eventually sell the unused energy to the energy company (at least at the same price at which the energy company buys it); to eliminate dependency on oil, which is often imported from countries with totalitarian or fundamentalist governments; and to create jobs that can generate a new economic sector—an industry to provide the necessary equipment, parts, and services. In the twentieth century, countries with crude-oil resources were the fortunate ones. As the twenty-first century advances and the use of new renewable energy sources is developed, there will be few oil importers, and the countries with good climates that know how to maximize renewable energy sources will benefit the most. In addition to its geographical location, Puerto Rico has extraordinary human capital, as was evidenced by a team of professors and students from the Mayagüez campus of the University of Puerto Rico who The Neglect of Solar Energy  189 managed in 1990 to develop a solar-car prototype that performed worthily in a competition in Australia. There, our team surpassed that of MIT while competing against automotive industry companies with milliondollar budgets. All we need is political leaders with vision, determination, and commitment to build an energy self-sufficient country, one that can serve as a model to other countries of the world. ...