MOTHER NATURE Mother Nature September 2017 | Page 5

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Mother Nature Aug /Sep 2017
Solar power holds endless untapped potential. The sun produces approximately
170,000 terawatts of energy per day. This is about 2,850 times the energy currently
required by the Earth’s population.
are expected to reach close to 70 gigawatts in 2017.
Now, with the joint commitment of the government, In-
dian Railways will be able to cohesively move forward
in its mission to normalize solar power in India. By the
end of 2017, India hopes to harbor at least nine giga-
watts of solar energy. The plan to implement solar pan-
els and production into rail stations is a part of a larger
goal to increase solar capacity to 100 gigawatts by 2022.
The union government is funding research that looks into
producing solar power in India from waste materials. In doing so, the cost of
expenditures will be reduced, leaving extra funding for expanding
electricity and other
infrastructure and railway facilities.
In order to finance the technology it will take to harness solar energy for the railways, India has collected
close to $8 billion in coal taxes. Approximately $1.8 billion of the funds will go into solar energy for Indian
Railways. The money from this tax is focused on producing cleaner energy, forest conservation and
sanitation efforts.
World’s first airport run solely on Solar power
Cochin International in southern India is the world’s first airport to be run solely
on power from the sun. It became totally energy self-sufficient in August 2015.
BBC reports that the 1,300-acre airport harnesses energy from a field of over
46,000 solar panels to run what’s apparently the country’s seventh busiest
airport. It produces enough energy to power 10,000 homes for one year. Install-
ing that solar plant took six months and $9.5 million, but apparently, airports
from elsewhere in India and even Liberia have expressed interest in copying
the model.
The airport's solar power plant, which
is comprised of more than 46,000 so-
lar panels arrayed across 45 acres of
land, will produce 48,000 units of en-
ergy per day,
Over the next 25 years, Cochin
International's solar power station is ex-
pected to save 300,000 tons worth of
carbon emissions. That's the equiva-
lent of planting three million trees or
not driving 750 million miles.
CIA wants to open a new international wing in January that will require more energy than the current plant is capable
of—which is saying something, because apparently, it’s already operating on a surplus, so that new wing is going to
require a boatload of power.
Apparently, the Indian Prime Minster wants to boost his country’s solar capacity to 100,000 megawatts in the next six
years. Still, more than 300 million Indians still aren’t on the power grid, so the sun seems like a cheap, accessible
option to fixing that.