The Pros And Cons Of Solar Energy In The United States

To say that the United States is too dependent on it’s fossil fuels is a massive understatement. It is often difficult to picture our lives without fossil fuels, because around 90% of the world’s electricity demand comes from the use of them (IER 2005). With this being said, if we want to provide the generations long after we are gone with sustainable, renewable, and environmentally appropriate (clean) energy, we certainly have to make big changes. These changes have already started but are understandably developing at a slower than we’d like pace. It was only a few years ago that electrically-powered cars we something we only saw in cartoons and in our dreams, but now the United States is the largest electric car market in the world. Through November of 2014, 83,647 electric cars were sold in The United States. That number represents a 26% increase from the same time period a week before, proving that although the growth is reasonably small in retrospect, progress is still progress nonetheless.
Proposing a new energy policy for the United States of America is no small task considering the hundreds and perhaps thousands of variables that …show more content…
Although the negative are nothing compared to the positives, I will explain the downsides of solar energy first. Currently, the prices of highly efficient solar cells are exuberantly expensive, they can be above $1000 for just a single panel, and most households will most likely need more than one. This makes the initial installation of solar panels very costly and could take years to overcome this cost. Moreover, solar energy is thought only to be able to generate electricity during daylight hours. If this is indeed true, that means for around half of each day, solar panels are not producing energy for your home. Also, the weather can affect the efficiency of solar cells. With these negative aspects of solar energy, there are some very obvious