Page 14 - Alternative Energy Systems in Building Design

INTRODUCTION

In the coming decades, the alternative energy technology industries will undergo
unprecedented growth and will represent a significant component of the U.S. gross
national product. The replacement of conventional fossil fuel and nuclear fission energy
resources by renewable-energy sources will mandate that industries, academia, and
research institutions provide immediate technological solutions to curb global environ-
mental pollution. To mitigate global environmental and atmospheric pollution and to
accelerate technological growth, it is imperative that international academia keep up
with industry by educating carrier professionals to meet these imminent challenges.
In the very near future, global economies will face enormous challenges that they will
need to resolve, increasing the ever-growing need for ecologically friendly renewable-
energy resources. Despite its status as the economic bastion and technological leader of
the free world and the largest atmospheric polluter of our planet, the United States has in
the past few decades totally neglected the economic promotion of key alternative energy
technologies such as solar and wind energy power generation. Even though both these
technologies were invented in the United States, the nation has fallen far behind all
developing countries, including Japan, Germany, and, soon, China.
Some of the most compelling factors supporting the promotion of alternative energy
studies are discussed below. They indicate that alternative energy technologies will
come to represent billions of dollars of new markets in the United States and around
the world. A few highlights of the alternative energy industry, covered by the
Renewable Energy Laboratories and the American Solar Electric Power Association,
are as follows:

■ By 2020, California’s installed photovoltaic capacity is expected to increase 30- to
40-fold, at an average of 36 percent a year.
■ Solar power generation, by 2020, is expected to provide approximately 10–17
percent of the electricity in California, as well as 3–6 percent of electricity in the
United States.
■ Over the next 3–7 years, California’s unsubsidized solar energy cost to consumers
is expected to compete with the cost of with grid power.
■ Since 1970, the price of solar photovoltaic power has decreased 100-fold.
■ Currently, the U.S. solar industry employs 3000 men and women. By 2020, this figure
is estimated to exceed 150,000.
■ By 2020, the solar photovoltaic industry is estimated to be worth close to $27 billion
per year.
■ The national goal of the United States is to meet 10 percent peak power by 2030,
or the equivalent of 180 million barrels of oil per year.

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