The Rise Of Renewable Energy - 1775 Words

Kammen, D. M., Kammen, D. M. (2006). The rise of renewable energy. Scientific American, 295(3), 84-93. The author of this article is Daniel Kammen, a distinguished professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the climate advisor to the Obama administration. In this article, the author’s major arguments were, one: greenhouse gas emissions can succeed through an increase in energy efficiency sources alone, two: the world should invest in solar cells, which is also known as photovoltaics, three, the commercialization of renewable energy sources accelerated, since 2000; four, wind power has been growing at the same pace of the solar energy industry, five, researchers are pressing hard for the development of†¦show more content†¦The only Kammen believes that this problem could be solved is to increase the energy efficiency technologies and that the United States and other developed nations must take the lead in developing renewable energy sour ces that generate little or no carbon. In my opinion, this option has a lot to do with the political will of these developed countries. Politicians and policymakers have worked in harmony in order to achieve this goal, which is often challenging, given the different interests of the two. In addition, the author believes that solar cells, which use semiconductor materials to convert sunlight into electricity, has a global generating capacity of 5,000 megawatts (MW) could potentially supply the world’s energy about 5,000 times as much as the world currently need (Kammen, 2006, p. 86). This sounds very impressive, but the question is, can countries in the developing afford to invest in this source of energy? I don’t think so, at least for now. Next to solar, wind energy is another renewable energy source that Kammen believes as a possible alternative, given the fact the wind energy industry has climbed to the pace of solar energy in terms of energy efficiency. The wind turbines, according to this author, has an increased rate of 25 percent per year for the past decade, and it produced nearly