As usual, whenever I do a search to dig up the actual pitifully low percentage of US energy needs met by solar power, it wasn't easy...
You have to wade through link after link to propaganda pieces trumpeting meaningless percentage "increases" and context-free KW and MW numbers that sound impressive until you look at the overall picture....
But I was determined:
Today, solar energy provides two-tenths of 1 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States. While the amount of solar electricity capacity in the US has increased in recent years—rising from 334,244 kilowatts in 1997 to 1,488,500 kilowatts in 2011 , it still only accounts for 0.1% of net electricity generated in the United States – the least among the renewable sources of hydroelectric, biomass, wind and solar.
On the other hand, thanks to new technologies, the percentage of increase in energy from natural gas in the past few years, has been dramatic, real, and meaningful:
If the current rate of power conversion continues, natural gas could soon surpass coal as the fuel of choice for power generators. Natural gas produced about 30 percent of the nation’s electricity in March, up from 21 percent the year before.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/06/11/coal ... toric-low/
In other words,
the percentage increase of US power needs being met by natural gas
in just one year, (9%) outstrips the total being met by solar power, (.2%)
by 18 fold....
Solar may not generate much power, but it sure generates a lot of hot air....
It's abundantly clear at this point that for the near and midterm (at least the next 100 years) the future for meeting US, (and global) energy needs in an environmentally sustainable and economically attractive way lies with natural gas, not solar panels or windmills. Expanding natural gas production helps the greenhouse gas situation without undermining the economy, (in fact, with the worlds largest reserves, natural gas is a boon to the US economy) reduces our dependence on oil from dodgy sources, (like Venezuela and the sheikdoms of the Mid East) and puts us in a position to help our friends in Europe get off their dependence for natural gas from the expansionist dictatorship in Russia...
Building the infrastructure for efficiently exporting natural gas overseas will take a few years, (5-10; nothing like many decades it will take for solar power to amount to more than a fart in a fish bowl)
Now
there's an infrastructure project that would produce good paying jobs that I could
really get behind...
)