The overall efficiency of sunlight to fuel is still crap so its still
needs land area in country sized chunk, or sea area in country sized
chunks.


The short answer to renewable energy is that here isn't enough free
energy in sunlight to actually satisfy anyone's needs, and if you try,
you end up with structures of country sizes, that totally modify the
environment more than CO2 does.



Peter Scott



I have noticed that you tend to think that we are looking for a single
answer to our energy needs, and vilify anything that can't do that. In
your case its nuclear. Like oil, whichever non-renewable fuel you opt
for *will* run out. I agree that we need nuclear but we also need as
wide a range of energy sources as we can make work. The sun is an
obvious source, even if not to you. When you think of solar methods you
assume they will be stuck in the present. We are at the Newcomen steam
engine stage of solar - very poor efficiency and rather expensive at
present. It'll never fly! But there is a survival imperitive and lots of
money to be made, so you can be sure that the solar methods in twenty,
perhaps even ten, years time will be greatly better than now. What we
need is a wide mix of sources, with as high a percentage of renewables
as is feasible.