#8: Elon Musk’s Three-Prong Plan for Sustainable Energy…
Welcome back!
This is going to be an opinion piece, while also expository at the same time…weird combo, I know. I’ll be looking into Elon Musk, and his plan to switch pretty much every non-renewable source of energy for one which is more sustainable. It’s quite an interesting plan, and although it could definitely be expanded on, it’s already a whole lot better than what we currently have in place. So, it’s worth writing about. Enjoy!
Do any of you remember that time when Elon Musk told a reporter that powering all of Hong Kong using solar energy would be easy, despite its dense population? No? Just me?
Well, as it turns out, Elon Musk was right about that. He’s right about a lot of things. Don’t get me wrong, he still makes a lot of mistakes. Selling a sorta-kinda-wannabe-flamethrower online to thousands of people around the world to fund a company probably wasn’t the best idea. But still. I like his plan for the implementation of sustainable energy. Or, at the very least, it’s a good place for us to start. But what exactly is so good about Elon’s plan? Let’s dive into it.
Elon Musk’s plan to solve our planet’s energy issues can be physically represented by the following object.
That’s right: a pitchfork. It has three prongs, and it can do a lot of damage if flung by a talented engineer like Elon. So, obviously, the question we’re going to ask now is: what are the three prongs, and what are they even good for? Good question.
Today, we’re going to dive right into to each one of Elon’s “prongs” of sustainable energy success, and explore why they do (or don’t) make sense.
Prong 1: Tesla
So, here, we’re looking at what Elon Musk is most known for (perhaps excluding SpaceX): his famous car company Tesla. Now, Tesla is kind of a unique car company, in that it only sells electric cars, but also makes them seem cool.
Prior to Tesla, thinking of an electric car probably would’ve drawn up the following image, or something close to it.
In short, a clunky, experimental vehicle, that only people really devoted to saving the planet, fixing climate change, or self-starting their own environmental preservation non-profit [in other words, people like me]. But, for the general consumer, this isn’t really the case. Nobody was going to sacrifice the prestige of having a fancy new-fangled Mercedes for a little bit of environmental preservation (obviously they didn’t care about the effects of their actions).
But, I digress. Elon Musk came up with something new. It was an electric car, but better. And the fact that the first Tesla released was the Roadster, a super sports car, also helped him really transition the whole concept of electric cars away from clunkiness and towards stylishness.
And quite honestly, it worked. Tons of people around the world are buying a Tesla, and Elon somehow turned it into the ‘cool’ thing to do. And obviously, using an electric car is so much better for the environment than to spew out not only greenhouse gases but also a whole slew of other pollutants and toxins into the air that everyone breathes. So, good on you Elon.
However, before we move onto the next prong on this list, I want to take a moment and point out that electric cars aren’t really the be-all-end-all of sustainable energy. In fact, unless a solar car is in an area where most of the electricity is provided by solar power plants or hydroelectric dams, it’s likely that the car will pollute around 60% of what a fossil fuel car would have. Better? Yes. Ideal? No.
And, given that the cheapest Tesla costs around $30,000, whereas a used car can be bought for just a couple thousand bucks, it’s kind of understandable that some people, particularly students or low-income consumers, may decide to purchase a polluting car over a Tesla, and sacrifice that extra 40% of environmental protection.
Prong 2: Solar City & Tesla Solar Roof
So, fortunately, Elon Musk has thought about some of the limitations I mentioned above, and he’s got some ways to fix them. While Tesla and SpaceX may be his most well-known entrepreneurial ventures, he definitely has others. One of these is SolarCity.
What? That reaction may be understandable. You see, although Elon Musk is technically a big part of SolarCity, he’s not really directly involved in its operations. Instead, he leaves that to his cousin, who is a co-founder and has been running the company for years. Until 2017, that is, when Elon decided to jump back in and had his company, Tesla, buy it off.
Why? Because Elon needed the second prong of his plan: micro-grid electricity. Indeed, unlike natural gas, coal, or nuclear power, solar power is exceptionally versatile. It can come in the form of large multi-billion dollar power plants, just as it can come in small packages which you can place on your roof and wait as your house gets juiced up by the sun.
So, why does Elon care about this aspect? To be honest it’s quite clear. As mentioned above, Tesla cars still do damage the environment, but to a lesser extent than regular cars. Elon, of course, wants to eliminate that completely (which is great). That’s also the reason Tesla unveiled their solar roof, which, like Tesla cars intended to do, tried to make the whole concept of having a solar roof stylish.
But, as we might expect, roofs don’t exactly work like cars do. While someone buying a car might be deciding between a gasoline car and an electric alternative, a person buying a solar roof would most likely need to swap out the current, working system for one which is new and stylish, but for no other economic incentive.
In fact, although solar panel costs have been plummeting, they are still quite a bit more expensive than gasoline or coal. That means that people are pretty much paying a premium to make a change to their current system, an alteration which they have no short-term incentive for. Sure, the long-term benefits are huge, but people don’t tend to look that far ahead.
All of these things are the reason why the third prong of Elon’s plan, though not yet implemented, is by far the most important.
Prong 3: The Top Corner of Nevada
So, upon reading that title, some of you may admittedly be a little bit confused. ‘The top corner of Nevada’? What is this guy on about?
Well, it’s actually a reference to this interview with Elon Musk, where he claimed that covering just a tiny corner of the state of Nevada with solar panels, would be enough to power the entire USA! So, that figure is quite astounding, and for just a moment, you kind of wonder why that’s not a thing yet…
Well, as it turns out, everything in this world works with incentives. Could US companies pitch in the money to build an entire solar power plant in Nevada? Of course! But why on Earth would they do it?
To save the environment? To help stop climate change?
Unfortunately, these things really don’t count as economic incentives. Like it or not, if a company were to set up a solar plant in Nevada, they would just be spending a ton of money, but there wouldn’t be any incentive there.
Solar cells are unfortunately still more expensive than fossil fuels, and so even if we have a solar plant with enough power for the country, much of that would, unfortunately, go completely unused, since consumers will just pick the option that is cheapest to them.
So, what’s the solution? Well, for this, we turn to our two main fields within the discussion of solar energy…engineering and economics. On the engineering side, scientists and technologists need to work as hard as they can to get the price of solar panels down, before it’s too late. And, economists and political activists need to work to try to make the public understand the long-term benefits of their short-term sacrifices, and work to make the government subsidize projects such as these.
But, for now, I guess the first two prongs is all we’ve got. Still, I suppose that’s better than nothing. Cheers, Elon Musk!
Thank you for reading! I hope it was worth your while! This article was a little bit out of the ordinary, but I thought it was too interesting of a topic not to cover it. Next time, I’ll hopefully be back to talk about the process of learning about sustainable energy, rather than trying to report on it in an Op-Ed style. But, if enough of you like it, I might as well try to do another! But until then…see ya!
