Should America Learn From Spain’s Use of Renewable Energy
America at one point was the leader in Solar Energy however we’ve been slipping a bit while other countries have been surging forward. Spain for example has jumped onto the bandwagon with both feet and offered several initiatives in order to spur growth in renewable energy. Spain had the rather ambitious goal to have 30% of the nations power needs to be supplied by renewable energy. They even started a program in 2006 that all new or renovated buildings are required to have solar water heating systems and/or photovoltaic arrays. New homes must have solar systems capable for providing 30%-70% of their hot water needs based off of location and the buildings water needs.
I know that there are several groups over in the southwest that are working on building some large solar power plants in order to generate some juice however I think our government needs to seriously step it up and start getting some of the legislation organized to make it easier for these things to get up and running. They also need to make it easier and more attractive for the home owner to convert as well.
Now we must understand the Spain is a fairly large country in Europe 2nd only to France however it’s only a little larger than California. Arizona and New Mexico combined are over 40,000 square miles larger. For being the large country that the United States is we really need to beef up some serious progress and start feeding more of America from renewable energy. I know that I alone pay well over $20,000 every 6 years in my electric bill. If we can pull some of the demand off of our oil reserves and lower our requirements of it we should start seeing the prices of oil based products and services to drop as well. Simple supply and demand would dictate that. Now I know that there are always ramifications to anything we do however (and I’m no expert by any stretch) I don’t really see any major drawbacks of promoting more solar and wind generated power. Now there are approximately 160 Million homes in America. If you take your average house roof size of 3000 square feet and cut it in half that brings us to 154,271 square MILES of rooftop(larger than the state of Montana the 4th largest state in the country). Even in the areas that don’t get a whole lot of light, if we had solar cells on all these homes… See what I mean? There is always a solution we just have to be willing to find it and implement it.
I know this has been another rant (just got another electric bill while passing a gas station with $3.95 a gallon for the “cheap” stuff). I just think we need to do more. We consider ourselves the greatest nation in the world (granted that’s up for debate by other countries that believe they are) the fact still remains there is a lot more we can do and our governments needs to quit postulating and trying to look important and do their jobs just as we are expected to do our jobs when we go to work. Grrrrr.
Written by
Ken