Look around you. Everywhere you look there is energy. Weaved into our world like veins in a body, energy reaches into every last corner of our lives. Whether its electricity powering your television, gas on the stove or petrol in your car, we are a society totally dependent on it. Our reliance is so great that without it modern life would grind to a halt. Just try to imagine how tomorrow morning would pan out in its absence. No alarm, no shower or radiator, no cold milk and no fuel to get to work. Go beyond a day and things get very serious, very fast, as food preservation becomes an issue with both home and supermarket freezers failing to function. Power really is the lifeblood of modern life and without it we are incredibly vulnerable.
Even though energy holds this crucial role, being literally a life or death consideration, we find ourselves in a farcical situation. Today, in the 21st century we get the vast majority of our energy through fossil fuels. This is to say we dig deep into the ground to find fossilised remains of animals and plants that hold the energy of their previously flesh forms. It is this energy, in the guise of gas and coal that is then used in power plants to produce energy. It is a strategy so old and so tried that we have become numb to the lunacy of it.
WHY DO WE TURN DOWNWARDS, FAR INTO THE GROUND, WHILE OUR BACKS ARE HEATED BY THE VERY ENERGY WE SEEK DEEP BELOW?
Every single drop of energy that has ever been used on this planet comes from one place, one radiant sphere; the sun. By digging up the fossilized remains of plants and animals we are simply digging up solar energy contained within them. But how can this make sense when enough solar energy drenches the planet every day to meet our energy demands for a year. Why do we turn downwards, far into the ground, while our backs are heated by the very energy we seek deep below?
Our strategy for obtaining energy is akin to a mountain dweller living next to a natural spring, but still finding the need to walk several hours a day to buy bottled water. In the years to come our actions will be looked back on with a mixture of embarrassment and shame. How could a society who put a man on the Moon and invented the internet rely on such Victorian methods of energy extraction and not see what was staring them in the face?
Soon our fossil fuelled days will fade from memory as a new era of energy extraction is born. Earth will become a solar empire, incredibly efficient at utilising solar energy far beyond our capabilities today. Modern solar panels are only able to absorb a maximum of 17% of the energy that falls on them but next generation panels, by mimicking photosynthesis, will achieve drastically higher efficiency rates and a reduction in cost will open them up to mass appeal.
A TIME OF ELECTRICITY BEING AS CHEAP AND READILY AVAILABLE AS THE AIR WE BREATHE.
These improved panels will start to appear everywhere and with the ability to fully fuel what they are appended to rather than just provide supplementary energy. Roofs on cars and houses will become a natural home, gifting society that most utopian of dreams; free energy. Time will pass and technology will develop further until we will reach a point scarcely visible today, a time of electricity being as cheap and readily available as the air we breathe. Such a breakthrough will have vast implications for the poorest of our kind. A continent like Africa could be transformed overnight.
The real tragedy here is that this shouldn’t be discussed as future technology at all, cheap efficient solar panels should be sitting next to our computers and iPads today. But they aren’t. And why they aren’t is the oldest answer of all; money. In the UK alone the energy market is a multibillion pound industry and globally it is a goliath. With so much money riding on it and so many employees any disruption could easily trigger a global economic crisis. Unfortunately we have built a world that runs on what makes the most money, not the most sense. So even though we sit upon this pale blue dot, that is basked in free energy, it’ll be awhile yet before we put the spades down and look up into the light.
FTR Talk 
