Ispectrum Magazine Ispectrum Magazine #12 | Page 35

cially if you live in the dreamland that is Solar Freakin’ Roadways. the total cost of Solar Freakin’ Roadways is 56 trillion dollars (or around $20 million per mile), which is just under four times the national debt of the USA. The Brusaws and others say that starting small will generate capital to build more, but even that doesn’t look likely, considering how far off we are from actually making a profit on these things. As much as we’d all love to believe that there will still be energy left over to sell, the compelling maths shown by critics shows that this is very far from reality. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Dutch SolaRoad, assuming it will lengthen to 100m, will cost around 3 million Euros (3.5 million dollars), which seems expensive considering that it will only produce enough energy to power three houses. But that’s neither here nor there. It is what this 3 million represents that is important – a step towards a renewable and sustainable future. To give some kind of perspective, one such astronomical estimate of the total cost of Solar Freakin’ Roadways is 56 trillion dollars (or around $20 million per mile), which is just under four times the national debt of the USA. This is admittedly only an estimate, and is one of the only ones available. The Brusaws are yet to have offered an official detailed quote, which is actually quite worrying in itself. So… What’s next? Excitingly, many institutions and organisations are commercially interested in this concept. For example the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has been mulling over the possibility of installing these road34