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Solar Energy - Poster Text         (The following text is printed on the poster to left)

The Fire in the Sky:   "Like a never-ending fire in the sky, the sun releases enormous amounts of heat and light that shower upon the earth.  Everyday, the Earth receives an amount of solar energy equal to 30 years of world fossil fuel energy use.  In half a day, the US receives the same amount of energy from the sun that it consumes for all purposes in an entire year.  If concentrated, the sunlight that falls on the hood of a car would be enough power to boil a pot of water in minutes.  Except for a few odd places, solar energy can be utilized anywhere in one form or another.  Even in places that are considered cloudy like New England or Europe, passive solar energy can be readily harnessed to warm buildings economically.  Many other parts of the world, like the Mediterranean and Africa, receive months of endless sunshine.

   Solar energy can heat buildings, heat water, cook food, drive pumps and refrigerators, and make electricity.  Passive solar, which uses little or no mechanical devices, is the easiest form to use.  It can supply all or most of the energy required by a conventional home.  Larger buildings like schools and apartments that use passive solar energy may use less than half the electricity, oil or gas of a similar conventional building and can often be built at little or no additional cost.

Over two million solar water heaters are used in Japan, and their use is accelerating in the US, where over 100.000 family water heaters were installed in 1981.  As technology improves and costs decline, solar photovoltaic cells will generate more electricity worldwide.

   While many new homes and industries will be designed to use the sun's power in the future, there exists an enormous potential to retrofit millions of existing buildings with solar applications now . For example, the addition of a passive solar greenhouse on a south facing wall reduces heating bills.  Since millions of houses in US cities are already facing south towards the sun, as in Washington DC, or in the grid cities of the American midwest, their roofs and walls are prime locations for solar panels for hot water, heat, or electricity.

The future of solar energy is very bright.  While there were only 135 solar houses in the US in 1975, today there are thousands and hundreds of thousands could be built by the end of the century. Millions could be built worldwide.  As time goes on, a variety of solar technologies will be combined to power entire communities and industries.  Abundant, clean, and free, solar energy will gain great importance in a world of diminishing finite fuels."       By Al Kettler                       

The Force that Flows:   "Water power, used for centuries to turn mechanical waterwheels, can now be harnessed to generate electricity and heat. Water is constantly moving, flowing downhill from land to sea, where it is swept by tides, washed upon coastlines, and channeled into vast oceanic currents.

In 1882, the world's first hydroelectric dam began producing electricity, and by 1975, water power yielded one quarter of the world's electric power. Around the world, water power exists at thousands of potential new dam sites ranging from streams to large rivers. Likewise, existing dams without turbines and generators carry an enormous possible capacity to make electricity and although many small dams that once produced power have closed, there is a growing trend to reopen such plants, as in Massachusetts and New York.

Tidal power, another form of water power, was first used hundreds of years ago in England to mill grain. In 1966, the French built the first commercial facility on the Rance River in northern France. Rising and falling waters there spin turbines to generate 240 million watts of electricity.  Potential tidal sites have been identified along the shore of 23 countries so far. New forms of unutilized oceanic water power are being explored . For example, floating ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plants can generate electricity by utilizing the temperature difference between sun-warmed surface waters and colder deep waters. A small OTEC plant pilot plant is operating in Hawaii and there are no technical barriers to building large OTEC plants.

Also, further research and development will enable countries ike Japan and Ireland to capture the force of rising and falling waves along their coastlines. Creative engineering is turning up other sources of water power. For instance, some American towns have installed hydroelectric generators flowing through city water mains, as in Philipsburg, Montana. Together, these new and old technologies will maintain and increase water power's role as an unending source of renewable energy."

The Heat Beneath Your Feet:    "Geothermal energy, the heat beneath your feet, is the most stable renewable energy source.

Three feet below most of the earth's surface, the ground temperature is always at least a mild 50 degrees F., and this temperature increases with depth to several hundred degrees. This heat can be used in many ways. One of the easiest ways to take advantage of this warmth is to build earth-sheltered and underground buildings.  Protected from exposure to cold air and winds, a well-designed earth-sheltered house can save much of the energy that standard houses use.

The Underground Space Center office building in Minneapolis, Minnesota was constructed for less money than a normal building of the same size, yet most of the structure is below the ground. Large scale applications of geothermal power are possible at sites with large reserves of underground hot water, hot rock, or steam. Eighty countries have such underground heat reservoirs. For example, most of the buildings in cold Reykjavik, Iceland are heated with geothermal water.

Year-round gardening is possible, and the city is very clean due to the resulting minimal use of fossil fuels, like coal and oil. Similarly, Boise Idaho has used hot springs for home heating since the 1890's, and France, Hungary, and New Zealand use underground hot water for domestic and industrial purposes. Currently, at least eight countries generate geothermal electricity. The Italians built the first such plant in 1904, with a power output of 350 million watts.  The world's largest plant, at the Geysers in California , generates enough electricity to power San Francisco. A 1975 study by the US Geological Survey estimates that known geothermal resources in the US could produce 140,000 watts of electricity over the next 30 years, or about the same power as 140 nuclear plants.

Geothermal energy is a vast non-polluting source of heat and electricity. Much of the technology is already known and its further development will play an important role in the transition to a renewable energy future."

- Segue to Solar, 2003-2010