AS THE US Congress contemplates digging up oil reserves in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, a study claims that one of the least developed renewable energy technologies, photovoltaic solar cells, is likely to contribute between 8 and 15 times as much electrical energy as the oil from the Arctic reserves ever will.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, oil production rates from the ANWR are likely to peak in 2034, at 270 million barrels per year. The reserves are expected to run out by about 2070. In a study due to be published in Energy Policy, John Byrne at the University of Delaware鈥檚 Center for Energy and Environmental Policy and his colleagues compared these figures with forecasts from the US National Renewable Energy Lab for the amount of energy likely to be produced from photovoltaic solar cells, a technology that currently makes up less than 1 per cent of the US total energy market.
Their analysis predicts that although the Alaskan reserves will start off ahead that lead will last barely 10 years. After that, solar cells will take over and remain more productive for the entire 70 years that ANWR is expected to continue producing oil. At the oil鈥檚 predicted peak in 2034, the forecasts for photovoltaics range from the equivalent of 480 million to 1130 million barrels a year.
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Joel Gordes, an energy expert with Environmental Energy Solutions in Riverton, Connecticut, says that oil normally has so many advantages that you would expect it to be cheaper than solar power. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e talking about one energy source that is ultimately transportable and storable and one that is in a state of intermittent flux,鈥� he says. But if oil from Alaska will be so hard to retrieve that solar cells are likely to outstrip it, that is a sign that the US should give up on domestic oil reserves, he says.