The Sun is quasi exhaustible, and the Renewable Energy issues!

Sometime ago, His Excellency, the Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) published a thought provoking piece captured, “is the sun inexhaustible?” His Excellency asked a critical question, considering the global campaign for alternative energy to fossil fuel use and the increasing adoption of solar energy by nations across the world, including the developing nations. I, however, have being a proponent of directly depending on the Sun for our energy needs; hence, His Excellency’s question got me thinking. So, is the Sun really, inexhaustible?

By general opinion, nothing lasts forever, which is a major reason why some schools of thoughts are asking for less dependence on the exhaustible fossil fuel. On a lighter note, going by the title of Sydney Sheldon’s 1994 bestselling novel, “Nothing lasts forever”.  Simply, in that light, the Sun is exhaustible! And according to astrophysicists and cosmologists, too, the Sun is exhaustible!

In the Universe, the Sun takes a pivotal position in the configuration of the Solar System, and a member of our galaxy called the Milky Way. Coupled with the increasing dependence on the Sun for our energy needs worldwide, the Sun is bound to enjoy increasing popularity amongst the different objects in the outer space in years to come. What about the other stars? Stars are born, and as we all know, for anything that is born, death is inevitable. This implies it has life and the life passes away with time. The earliest stars were formed out of particles like hydrogen and helium just a hundred million years after the Big Bang! The earliest stars seem to have been 10 and more than 100 times more massive than the Sun. The crushing pressure in their cores made them burn through their nuclear fuel in only a few million years. However, the death of these mega stars gave way to the formation of the normal stars, and it heralded the Dark Age.

Photo credit: NASA

This present generation of stars is more sedated than the earliest ones. The Sun is just another star in our Milky Way galaxy and the Earth happens to be one of the planets revolving around it as part of the solar system. The Sun therefore affects our environment more than the other stars in our galaxy; hence more than the other stars in the Universe. The yet to be unraveled concept, though, is how much our environment affects the Sun. At any rate, even the fossil fuel is formed in the Earth’s crust as a result of the Sun energy input onto our environment.

Photo credit: NASA

Aside from lighting up our fragile Earth, according to a colleague from the Innovations to Society, “nearly all energy forms used on Earth are, either directly or indirectly, based on solar energy, the most prominent being fossil fuels, biomass, wind, hydro energy, and tidal.” Solar energy can be directly converted into electricity in several ways. This gives the biggest hope as an alternative energy source, and it is unarguably the cleanest source of energy. The Sun consists entirely of gaseous materials, primarily hydrogen and helium, mixed with trace amounts of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. The surface of the Sun is about 5550 degrees Celsius. Above the surface, the temperature rapidly increases up to several million degrees. This causes most elements to lose all their electrons, forming an electrically conducting gas called plasma. As mentioned, the earliest stars spent just about a million years to get burned out. The Sun will also burn out like other stars; hence, the Sun is exhaustible.

Photo credit: Stanford Solar Center

However, the Sun should still have about 5 billion years; having survived 5 billion years so far! Not all stars have this length of years to spend though. This fact should allay any concern about using up the energy from the Sun any time soon. Hence, the Sun is rather, quasi exhaustible! Its supply is awesomely abundant. In fact, using up the energy from the Sun means the end of the Earth, just because even the foods we eat all source their energy directly or indirectly from the Sun. So tapping directly into the energy from the Sun for alternative energy purposes to any degree of usage does not affect the intensity of the Sun or even the reserves of the particles that make up the Sun. And whether we turn away from using the Sun for our renewable energy purposes, the intensity of the Sun or its reserves of particles are not affected. Therefore, recourse to solar energy as an alternative to fossil fuel is in line, and it is the best thing that will happen in the energy industry worldwide. The direct conversion of the solar energy from the Sun into usable energy is the only true renewable source on Earth.

As such, falling on the Sun as our direct source of energy has no negative impact on our environment, this is the only reason why we advise that we tap directly into the Sun. The issue of global warming (climate change) is anchored principally on using energy sources that produce greenhouse gasses, which are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, sulphur hexafluoride and ozone depleting substances; sulphur hexafluoride and ozone depleting lsubstances; chloroflurorocarbons, hydrochloroflurocarbons, and halons. The human-induced radiative forcing of the Earth’s climate is largely due to the increases in these concentrations. The ozone layer absorbs the ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. The greenhouse gases absorb infrared heat radiation from the ground. These greenhouse gases are a stabilizing factor in maintaining the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere. Some of the greenhouse gases are also capable of depleting the ozone layer, making the Earth prone to the direct penetration of the ultraviolet radiation.

Cars and turbines in Sun

The excessive increase in greenhouse gases can contribute to warming up the Earth’s atmosphere, melting away the ice in the Arctic, raising the water levels in the Atlantic Ocean, partially leading to the extinction of many species, and more dangerously, the shortage of food worldwide could be linked to it. Bush burning and poor solid waste disposal can also lead to excessive production of greenhouse gases. So, the efforts being made toward control of forestry/bush burning and proper solid waste disposal are in line. However, the predominant sources of the increase are from the combustion of fossil fuels, which principally release carbon dioxide. The atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by over 10% from 1980s according to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is alarming. Therefore, Africa can only get warmer by the continuous burning of fossil fuel worldwide, whether in Acapulco, or San Francisco, Shenzhen or Tokyo, Port Harcourt or Accra, or in Toulouse or London. In essence, the car that is built to run on fossil fuels in Bavaria but driven in faraway Ontario affects our climate here in Lagos. The warming is global as much as it is local. However, during the past 5 billion years, the Earth has gone through climate changes over and over again. The formless Earth at the beginning has alternatively experienced ice and warm periods. But as the challenge of an ice or warm period is being faced, we’d need to proactively find an immediate solution to balance up the temperature while looking ahead. In a nutshell, the developing nations must start to work just as the developed nations are continuously working. Fossil fuel, biofuels and most other sources of energy are indirectly created by the Sun. The Sun is the single most abundant source of renewable energy. The current growth rate of using solar energy is low because the initial cost is prohibitive, and some more advances need be made in the area of solar capture efficiency in order to be able to capture a larger fraction of the solar spectrum. A breakthrough is however, in view.

Ayodele Faiyetole

It is possible though that some of the so called renewable energy sources are much more damaging to the environment than the orchestrated damages caused by fossil fuel. In this light, I will agree with His Excellency, the Governor of Lagos State that proper weighing of the pros and cons, both short and long term of whichever alternative source(s) we are adopting needs to be exhaustive before we decide.
Ad astra.
Ayodele Faiyetole
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A part of this article first appeared in The Punch in January 2009. This full text was requested for, and published by Lagos Indicator-a publication dedicated to the State Government, for its Governors' Global Climate Summit edition, held in Los Angeles from Sept. 30th-Oct. 2nd, 2009.