Solar will not be "grass roots". The closer to "grass roots" we will have is roof solar,if companies pay for that energy going to its grid. With the lower prices and Moore's law in favour of solar, big solar farms will be the norm.
It is because solar have a little problem: it not produce eletricity if there is no sun. Cloud days and nights. So, solar need some way to store that eletricity when produced. A good way is hydreletric power, but it is possible the development of better capacitors (super capacitors and ultra capacitors that use graphene) can cretae huge eletricity storers.
Anyway, that will need an intyeligent nation wide grid, that will distribute the stored eletricity. So, lower solar prices will bring us not a more descentralized grass roots production, but big nationwide grids that will need government control and regularization and big companies producing and storing solar eletricity.
Anyway, I think the problem is the "grass roots" concept. It assumes that the industrial society will not survie to peak oil. The problem with that concept is that industrial society can survive and prosper with cheap solar and "grass roots" return to feudalism will never happen.
IMHO, the Russia deal with Iran for build 8 nuclear reactors makes any US Senate block irrelevant.
I fear something similar happened not to the United Nations, but to League of Nations. Germany, Japan, ring any bells?
@Jesper
Solar will not be "grass roots". The closer to "grass roots" we will have is roof solar,if companies pay for that energy going to its grid. With the lower prices and Moore's law in favour of solar, big solar farms will be the norm.
It is because solar have a little problem: it not produce eletricity if there is no sun. Cloud days and nights. So, solar need some way to store that eletricity when produced. A good way is hydreletric power, but it is possible the development of better capacitors (super capacitors and ultra capacitors that use graphene) can cretae huge eletricity storers.
Anyway, that will need an intyeligent nation wide grid, that will distribute the stored eletricity. So, lower solar prices will bring us not a more descentralized grass roots production, but big nationwide grids that will need government control and regularization and big companies producing and storing solar eletricity.
Anyway, I think the problem is the "grass roots" concept. It assumes that the industrial society will not survie to peak oil. The problem with that concept is that industrial society can survive and prosper with cheap solar and "grass roots" return to feudalism will never happen.
Professor,
it is BRICS. South Africa is a member too.
That power bloc is developing...