A new solution to climate change

Alan Cai

October 27, 2023

The climate crisis is pressing and abominable. As global industries rapidly develop, greenhouse gasses such as Carbon Dioxide will continue to proliferate throughout the atmosphere and global temperatures will maintain constant ascent.

The chief contributor to the global climate crisis is fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are energy sources derived from prehistoric biological materials. Coal is a solid component of fossilized swamps. Petroleum is derived from heated and pressured fossil zooplankton and algae, among other fossil organisms. Natural gas is also a product of the intense heat and pressure fossilized microorganisms undergo.

All of the aforementioned fossil fuels are nonrenewable resources. Nonrenewable resources are not resources that can not be renewed, they are simply a designation given to resources that take longer to replenish than the rate at which they are consumed. Eventually(millions of years later), the earth’s supply of fossil fuels will be refilled by modern biomasses. Thus, under this definition of nonrenewable resource, nuclear power can also be considered a nonrenewable energy consumption method.

Renewable energy encompasses technologies such as hydroelectric power dams, solar panels, wind turbines, biofuels, and geothermal power plants. Although each of these options has its own benefits and flaws, this paper seeks to expound upon the improvement of a specific technology: solar panels.

Solar panels function by absorbing sunlight and converting it to electricity using photovoltaic cells. Photons from sunlight excite the semiconductor matrices of the solar panels and move electrons to produce direct current.

Some of the disadvantages of using solar panels are their high initial investment and dependence on sunlight intensity. There is a nuanced solution to these issues seldom used yet plausibly effective: mirrors and lenses.

Mirrors and lenses are relatively inexpensive to manufacture but could drastically improve the efficacy of solar panels. When solar panels operate on their own, their maximum energy input is limited to the amount of sunlight that directly hits their surface. However, if slanted mirrors were employed, solar panels could conceivably be able to double or triple the amount of light energy it absorbs.

Lenses improve the ratios even further. If magnetic lenses were engineered to absorb sunlight from a massive surface area and channel it into a small solar panel, the efficiency of those solar panels could be literally magnified many times its original pace.

Using less material to make more energy is key to solving the energy issue posed by solar panels. It will ensure that silicon and rare earth minerals are not depleted before the technology reaches its full potential. Although this plan may seem to be a superficial fix to a complex problem, it may prove to be an effective kindling in the grueling fight against climate change.