There Is No "Best Way" When It Comes to Renewable Energy

Implications: There is still a tremendous bias to find "the" answer to the challenge of providing cleanly, affordable and secure energy that is also profitable to investors.  Our centralized, command-and-control way of extracting and delivering non-renewable energy blinds us to the fact that even there, different energy sources feed into it.  It will be no different in how we will harvest and deliver energy from renewable sources - no one sources, or even one way of delivering from that source.

Analysis: Our convenience-obsessed and fast-buck driven world compels us to find a single answer to increasingly scarce and polluting energy usage.  I will start out by stating that there is none.  Even our present dig, drill and drain world used four major sources - coal, petroleum, natural gas and uranium.  These four served various niches.   Renewable energy - solar, wind and others - will do the same.

The focus (pun) on concentrated solar will also show its niche, but it will not be the only way.  Concentrated solar thermal for electricity generating will prevail in areas with high amounts of direct sunlight (insolation), such as deserts.  Use of storage media such as molten salts will also permit dispatching of energy to match peaks in late afternoons, instead of solar noon.

But concentrated solar thermal is still cyclical and will be offset by wind power and its developing storage systems for more temperate climates and different times of the year.  Solar photovoltaic systems will provide more instantaneous supply, both in distant as well as building based arrays.  Geothermal, bioenergy such as solid and gaseous fuels, will provide more baseline electricity.

Even concentrated solar thermal has three major variations - the parabolic trough, dish and the tower that is mentioned in the above article.  All three have advantages and disadvantages.  As society has a great choice of ways to satisfy energy needs, so will investors have a great choice in different technologies to meet those needs.