Solar panels
dominating the cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which mines the largest amount of cobalt globally. For this reason, the way we go about extracting the materials would need to change to remain sustainable.
If we can sustainably mine the required materials and mass manufacture the panels, then the location of the solar panels becomes the problem. Figure 1 shows the land covered by solar panels now and into the future if we are to continue the path of projected energy consumptions. The image shows that only a small percentage of land would need to be covered for solar panels to produce enough energy to meet today's energy needs. The total sunlight a country receives is a major factor in deciding which countries are best suited to having the most solar panels. In first
Figure 1 This image has been taken from There is No Planet B , Berners-Lee, M.
place is Australia, followed by Russia, China, Brazil, and the USA. 4 The size of the country can easily skew the table; Russia illustrates this as the sunlight it receives is dim but due to the sheer size of the land, it has a lot of low intensity sunlight. This makes it a less ideal candidate as a larger number of solar panels would be needed. Although Brazil scores highly, placing solar panels here would lead to further deforestation of the Amazon and cause more environmental harm than benefits. This leaves us with many of the world's deserts. The best location is the Simpson desert, as Australia receives 7.5% of all the sunlight that reaches land. China and the USA are also in the top 5 and they are also the top two largest users of fossil fuels in the world. Having these carbon giants convert to green energy would see vast climate benefits. Sub-Saharan countries are also high up on the table. If the western world were to share its resources and technologies, then many sub-Saharan countries could skip over the fossil fuel phase and move straight to renewables. For countries like the UK, Bangladesh, Netherlands and South Korea, who have little sunlight, the solution of solar looks less pleasing as they would not be able to generate enough energy on their own. So, for this hypothetical world to work there would need to be a considerable change in our values, as it would require complete trust in sharing on a global level. This would be something unheard of in the Anthropocene. The major issue is that reliant countries such as the UK would be placed in a position in which they can be strong-armed by another country into political decisions. Unfortunately, history does not favour this type of global collaboration, with the most recent example being the UK sanctions that have been placed on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine, with the government stating that they have ‘planned to phase out the imports of Russian oil by the end of the year – depriving Putin’s government of access to their lucrative oil revenues’ . 5 For this reason, to make this ideal world work, political leaders from across the world must come together for the greater good of the future of the planet and make an agreement that no matter the circumstances this global electricity grid cannot be targeted or destroyed for political gain.
The last challenge is the long-distance transmission of electricity. Currently there are projects such as the DESERTEC project which aim to transmit electricity from the MENA states to Europe via UHVDC
4 Berners-Lee 2021: 76-77. 5 GOV.UK 2022.
142
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker