ABSTRACT
There was no doubt that solar energy is immense and that it
represents thousands time the whole energy consumption by
humankind, that only one hour of solar energy would be able to
cover one year of the world’s energy demand, but in the years
2000, when the discussions about climate change and fossil fuel
exhaustion started to become more and more important, it was
still considered as a dream or as an option for the next century.
In the beginning of 2008, after a G8 meeting about world energy
issues, the solar energy option was not even mentioned in the
press releases among the solutions, which could be considered to
face this challenge, involving mainly the concept of “clean” coal,
nuclear and large wind mill conversion for renewable energies.
Solar energy, and photovoltaic conversion especially, were simply ignored as a short-term strategic priority at the high international decision maker levels. The fundamental reason was very simple, photovoltaic achievements and prospects, were not “visible” at this
level of decision. What represents 5 GW installed, worldwide in
2007, in front of hundreds of GW installed just of electricity supply
(about four times more for the whole energy supply including
fossil fuels) when decisions have to be taken for the next 10 to 20
years? Almost nothing! Even impressive growth rates of 40% per
year are not impressive at such a low level of market penetration.
Also, looking to the roadmaps made by specialists at these times-
solar energy endeavor onset at a significant level was only expected
in 2030-would have also discouraged more motivated decision
makers to engage strong fighting for short term scenarios were
photovoltaics would take a significant share: if specialists themselves are not expecting significant contributions why non specialists should be more credible! This was a strange situation, with on one side an extraordinary development of photovoltaics (PV) at the scientific,
technological and industrial levels, but on the other side a poor
consideration at the political level, due to a lack of visibility
and ambition, and reinforced by a systematic opposition of many
established and powerful energy conservative lobbies!
