[motivation] - principle - technology - energy production costs

The future of this earth and mankind substantially depends on our ability to slow down the population increase in the “Third World” by civilized means. The key is to increase the standard of living, to overcome the inhumane poverty and deprivation.
To achieve this traditional means will not suffice any longer as exemplified by a “paradoxon”: Those countries where agriculture provides more than 20% of the gross national product are those also stricken by starvation. Development requires mechanisation and energy. Energy consumption increases proportional to the gross national product or prosperity while simultaneously the population growth will decrease exponentially (Fig.1).

Fig.1: Energy consumption and population growth in a country as a funktion of it’s per capita gross domestic product.

Many developing countries possess hardly any energy sources and their population doubles every 15 to 30 years! The results are commonly known: Civil wars and fundamentalism. If these developing countries are provided with only a humane and viable minimum of energy the global energy consumption will drastically increase! Who could supply such an enormous amount of energy without an ecological break-down (because poor countries cannot afford environmental protection) and without safety hazards (because they are not acquainted with the safety requirements for nuclear power plants) and without a rapid depletion of natural resources at the expense of future generations?

The sun!

Many of these countries are lavishly provided with solar radiation in their desert areas. This is common knowledge, stated already in Agenda 21 of the Rio-UN-conference, everybody is talking about it, nobody does anything. Why? Because apparently it must be a well-kept secret that large-scale solar energy utilization is possible today and that it is affordable and competitive!