6 Reasons Why NOW is the Best Time to Go Solar! (SolarBuyersClub.org)

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6 REASONS NOW IS THE BEST TIME

TO GO SOLAR why solar energy is your only inflation-defying option to escape 5 frightening energy trends.

Special Report: 6 Reasons Now Is the Best Window in History to Go Solar

Why Solar Energy is Your Only Inflation-Defying Escape from 5 Frightening Energy Trends (and 1 Shocking One).

You read the news. You consider yourself fairly informed on many issues. But most people rarely take the time to comb through what they’ve learned, and use it to actually change something in their lives.

It’s only by changing what we do, even down to altering our most basic assumptions, that we can separate ourselves from the masses who continue going where the trends and beliefs of the mainstream culture and talking heads tell them to go.

This paper is about your future. Our future. Your very way of life, and the lives of future generations within your family.

You’re about to discover some startling information. The reason it’s so ominous is because it’s based on issues everyone who’s paying attention to world affairs (like you) already knows about. Issues like:

• Population (It’s growing. A LOT)

• Primary energy sources (They’re changing. More than you realize)

• Primary energy use (It’s increasing, and for some shocking reasons both the left and the right are in denial about)

• Money and the costs of surviving, let alone maintaining our way of life.

Before now, no one has put them all together and seen the future like you’re about to. We’ve all been staring at these big puzzle pieces for years. But we’ve never connected them to see the big picture.

Why This Matters To You Our whole world continues to globalize and modernize. Providing the only foundation for this is something the U.S. hasn’t had a coherent policy about for decades:

ENERGY.

You’ve requested this paper for one simple reason: You care about your future. You want to build something with your life that endures, that has value, and that stands strong even in challenging times of massive change and uncertainty.

Your way of life – and everyone else’s in the whole world – depends on having reliable, affordable, and sustainable access to energy. Whether that’s wood, coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear power, or renewable energy – we as a species cannot survive without energy.

And your primary sources of energy are under threat as never before.

You might be thinking, “I’ve heard this before. ‘Oil is running out.’ They’ve been saying it for years. Jimmy Carter said it. Yet here we are 35 years later doing fine.”

It’s true. We are doing fine, right now. And many predictions about oil have been wrong.

You can find articles from the 80s and 90s warning that “peak oil” was going to hit in the early 2000s.

But we’re nearing 2020, and both oil and natural gas are booming as never before, with new discoveries and advanced technology providing increased yields and efficiencies never expected by the doomsayers of the recent past. Best guesses now say we have at least 40 more years of proven oil, and it’s a reasonable guess to expect that number to increase yet again.

This paper isn’t about oil. “Peak oil”, though it may get the most press, isn’t the only energy trend you need to be worried about.

What you’re about to learn doesn’t get reported much by the big news outlets. And when it does, it’s done in piecemeal snippets that fail to recognize the alarming trends that are plain to see if you just put all the snippets together.

That’s what this paper has done. We’ve assembled facts and information available to anyone. We’ve synthesized it all into 6 easy‐to‐understand energy‐related trends. And we’ve put it all in one place to allow you to do what news is supposed to make possible: To make an informed, concrete decision.

That’s the goal. By the end of this paper, you will know how to avert the effects of the irreversible energy trends you’re about to see. So with that, let’s take a look at the first trend.

Alarming Energy Trend #1: Developing Countries Are Modernizing Their Agricultural Practices

Wait, doesn’t that sound like a good thing? Aren’t people hungry all over the world? And wouldn’t better farming practices improve that? Yes, yes, and yes. It is a good trend. That’s why you’ve probably never heard it when people discuss energy.

Agricultural modernization has all sorts of benefits. Increased yields. Fewer workers needed. Better distribution. Longer preservation times. But all these benefits come at a cost – that foundational resource we talked about already – energy.

3300%? That Sounds Big As of 2001, industrialized nations used 3300% more energy per agricultural worker than developing nations. That’s not a misprint.

According to the Natural Resources Management and Environment Department, industrialized nations used 3294 kgoe (that’s a unit of energy) for every person who works in the agriculture industry.

Developing nations used only 99.

Why does that matter? Because as developing nations accelerate their use of the improved technologies and practices we’ve been using for decades, that 99 kgoe number will skyrocket.

To provide food for the ever‐growing, and ever‐more‐consuming, populations around the world, it will take far more energy than we’re using now.

Remember all those hungry people? In spite of some huge improvements in many nations, tens of thousands still die of starvation every year. There are hunger catastrophes lived out every day in some places. But as the agriculture in those nations develops, and they keep more people alive (this is good!), they will be using far more energy to do so than they use now.

Even if you go very conservative, and predict developing nations will average 1000 kgoe/worker in 10‐20 years, that’s still ten times what they’re using now. And there are way more countries (and people in them) in this category than in the US. The majority of the world’s population lives in developing nations, and many of those are the fastest growing in terms of population.

Are you seeing the picture here?

To provide food – just food – it’s going to mean a nearly immeasurable increase in energy usage. That doesn’t even consider the other energy‐gouging features of modern culture. Think of all those cell phones, billions of them, charging up every night. How many cell phones charged up 25 years ago?

None. They didn’t exist. Now, almost everyone and their kids have cell phones. Do you think developing nations won’t go the same way? It’s already happening.

Where’s the Farmland?

And just to make sure we get this point, here’s another sobering fact. Nearly all the “productive land” on earth – that’s defined as land useful for farming, crops, and grazing – is already being used. Our only option if we want to feed people and stay alive is to improve the productivity and efficiency of the land we already use.

We do that with pest control, agricultural science breakthroughs, and improved technology. And all of these rely on energy – lots of it.

The developing nations will have to modernize their agriculture. They HAVE to. And to do so, they’ll need vast supplies of currently untapped energy sources.

Now, you might be thinking – that number is “per worker.” We have a lot fewer people working in agriculture in our country compared to most developing nations. So sure, it’s 3294 compared to 99, but if there are a lot more workers using 99 kgoe, then maybe these numbers even out.

The same report answers this question too, by looking at the energy used per hectare of arable land and the energy per metric tonne of produce. In both cases, the industrialized nations still use far more energy – 325% and 242% more, respectively.

So even with fewer actual workers, industrialized agriculture uses far more energy to produce the higher yields that our nation, and the whole world, depend on to live.

What can we do to supply the growing energy needs of agriculture across the world?

Alarming Energy Trend #2: We’re Putting In More Than We’re Getting Out

We’re going back to the farm again. Surprised? You thought you were going to read about oil and fossil fuels and solar panels. Why are the first two alarming energy trends about farming? Because in the US, agriculture accounts for 15% of our total energy consumption.

It’s important to put things like this in perspective. Most talk about energy focuses on one of three areas: Transportation, electricity, and industrial. But if modern agriculture uses 15% of all the energy in the US, then similar numbers are sure to be true in other nations, as they continue developing.

What are we getting out of that 15%?

Unfortunately, less than we put in. According to a Cornell University study, the US food system consumes ten times more energy than it produces. What does that mean?

Food itself contains energy. You know them as calories. They can also be called Joules, kilojoules, btus, and many other things. But that energy comes from the sunlight (photosynthesis), as well as all the complex interactions of plants, animals, insects, and humans. It’s biology. In physics, energy is called “work.”

With the mechanized farming practices that have produced vast increases in yields over the last 100 years, we’re using many other forms of energy to produce this food besides pure human labor – and most of it comes from the fossil fuels: coal, natural gas, and oil.

As you’ll see in a bit, these energy sources are indeed running out. To continue to produce food at the levels humans need to survive, we’ll either be spending a lot more to get the same fossil fuels, or we’ll have to find other sources of energy.

Again, to be clear: we aren’t going to use less energy. Getting 10,000 chickens to grow, lay eggs, and be used for meat isn’t going to get much more efficient. Yes, there are things you can do, and you should.

And we can argue about outdoor grazing vs indoor facilities all we want. But people need to eat, and we have to grow the food in greater amounts than we’re growing it today. Why? Population grows. Like you saw in the first alarming energy trend, other nations will be increasing what they produce, and will need more energy to do it.

So we’ll need to find the energy somewhere. But we need to also be aware that our system produces negative returns on energy, and the trend is increasing.

Between 1945 and 1994, the same Cornell study reports that energy input into agriculture increased by 400%, whereas crop yields increased by 300%. Both went up. And the second number is fantastic. But extend this trend out for another 40 years. The gap will widen each year. More energy goes in, and we don’t get the same amount out.

This is not about conservation. It’s not about environmentalism. It’s not about left and right. This is just what modern agriculture is. It uses more energy than it produces. If we didn’t do this, we wouldn’t be able to feed as many people as we do. So we have to do this.

The point of recognizing this trend isn’t to say you should use less energy. The point is – what will happen if the prices of that energy double? Or go up by 50%? Even just 20%?

It would sink the global economy.

What can you do to avoid the coming energy price increases?

Alarming Energy Trend #3: Fossil Fuels Are Running Out

Ah, here it is. The one you hear about all the time. Of all these alarming trends, this one gets by far the most press. But that’s because it’s so obviously true.

There are people who actually argue that oil will never run out. Never. This is absurd. The earth is only so big. It contains a finite amount of oil. And even if we find and extract every last drop – there is a finite amount. No one can argue against that.

When you look at what the peak‐oil‐deniers really say, they don’t disagree with this idea. They just think that day will never come. Their reasons for this are very important to listen to. Here are their most common arguments for saying oil won’t run out:

1) Technology is improving, allowing the extraction of more fossil fuels than ever before 2) Energy efficiency is getting better – we’re using less to do the same tasks 3) People will adapt, and choose other less energy‐intensive options, like biking and walking 4) Alternative and renewable energy will increase its role in our society

One item on that list is irrelevant. But the other three are all true. Which one isn’t accurate? It may offend a large number of people, especially conservationists, but #2 is not applicable to our discussion.

We’ll get to why a little later. But the reason is shocking, so keep reading, because it will change the way you look at energy use in our society.

And to be clear – it’s not that #2 is false. Just not relevant. On an item‐by‐item, process‐by‐process basis, there are a lot of energy efficiency improvements happening, and they are all helpful. But these things aren’t actually saving us any energy, as a society. And you’ll see why later.

The other three items on that list are all very true, however. For #1, you can read gobs of data from all the energy associations, agencies, and companies, and they’ll all say the same things. We’re way beyond where we thought we’d be in terms of oil and natural gas.

Technological improvements like electric cars, fracking, and improved drilling techniques allow more oil and natural gas to be produced than anyone thought possible 30 years ago. The US actually produces more energy than it imports, a situation unfathomable not so long ago.

So yes, the oil alarmists of yesteryear were all wrong. But only about when. Not if. The day will come when oil finally runs low. And when that day comes, prices will skyrocket. The vital sectors – like military and industrial uses – will get priority. People will be left to fend for the scraps.

But what about agriculture? Won’t farms get priority? Don’t bet on it. Remember how much agriculture uses? 15% of our total? That’s way too much to keep afloat with dwindling resources.

Now, is all this just more paranoia? No. Remember – those four predictions listed above come from people who don’t believe oil will run out. Here’s a quote from one of them, economist Mike Moffatt (underlines mine):

“Eventually the price will reach a point where gasoline will become a niche good purchased by very few consumers, while other consumers will have found alternatives to gas.…it's quite likely that in the future gasoline will become a niche commodity. Changes in consumer patterns and the emergence of new technology driven by increases in the price of oil will prevent the oil supply from ever physically running out.”

See that? To justify the absurd idea that oil will never run out, he paints a picture of a future where only the rich and elite can afford gasoline. He calls it a “niche” commodity. And because prices become so outlandish that gas becomes unaffordable for all us normal folks, oil won’t run out.

Even if he’s right – is that the kind of world you want to live in?

If oil is so expensive no one can afford it, isn’t that basically the same thing as if it had run out?

An even greater flaw in Moffatt’s argument is that he focuses solely on oil, and its principal use, gasoline. But did you know that 40% of oil gets used for other purposes? 40%. Like what?

The biggest one is plastic. Can we live without plastic? Not very easily. Plastic is an amazing material, and one of its greatest qualities is its sterility. It doesn’t rot, doesn’t mold, and is easy to keep free of germs.

That’s why our hospitals are filled with plastic.

Take away the plastic, and you guarantee a catastrophic increase in communicable diseases. And if you think about all the other uses of plastic, many of them are indispensable to our modern way of life.

The next one is rubber. Your tires. Electric cars still need tires. Tires are made from petroleum products.

Lose the oil, and you lose the tires. And just like plastic, rubber gets used in countless applications of industry and modern life.

So in Moffatt’s world, all these uses will either go away, or become soul‐crushingly expensive.

Here’s the current situation:

This is what we’re using now. Oil, the first of the three fossil fuels that will run out, drives one third of the world’s energy use. If oil goes down, even by half, our world would become a desolation – unless alternatives can be found soon enough to extend our oil reserves.

Now, if you still doubt oil will run out, here are a few items to consider:

• In 2008, Stanford professor Gilbert Masters famously declared the world had about 41 years left of proven oil reserves. Yes, that was before the fracking breakthroughs we’ve seen since then.

But the point remains – even if Masters is off by half, then maybe it’s 80 years. Maybe it’s 100.

For a material so integrated into every fabric of our daily lives, 100 years isn’t very long to come up with alternatives that will work on a global scale.

• The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported in 2009 the world produced 85 million barrels of oil per day. Think of that number. 85 million barrels. In one DAY. Today, that number has surpassed 90 million. With numbers of that scale, each year, to argue we won’t run out of oil (or natural gas) one day is simple lunacy.

•

•

800 oil fields worldwide – about 75% of the total known in 2009 – were found to have “already peaked” by the International Energy Agency (IEA), according to British newspaper The Independent.

The same IEA report found that oil production was declining 6.7% per year. In 2007, they had predicted a decline of 3.7%. So they were wrong – in a bad way.

A Quick Recap So, you have declining oil fields, but new technology like fracking expanding our reachable reserves.

You have energy efficiency and lifestyle shifts like more biking and walkable cities, but other alarming new trends that basically cancel out all those gains (details coming later).

And you have an ever‐increasing international need for energy for food production and daily life, guaranteeing a future end‐date for oil.

“Okay, Oil is Running Out. What about Natural Gas and Coal?”

Natural gas has followed a similar upward trend as oil in terms of technological improvements and expanding the known reserves. Because it’s so much cleaner than coal it has also spiked in its share of energy consumption.

In 2010, 25% of US energy consumption came from natural gas. By 2015, that share had jumped to over 28%. With the huge volumes of materials in play, a 3% change is quite large. In that same time period, oil and coal dropped their percentages, and renewables also gained. See this table from BP for predictions of how these trends will continue:

That’s the trend of recent years, and it’s only going to continue. We’ll see more increases in natural gas and renewables, and slow declines in coal and oil.

So what’s the bad news? When it comes to running out of stuff, natural gas is more like oil than like coal.

In other words, we’ll run out of natural gas a lot sooner than we’ll run out of coal. Way sooner. So, while this has cleaned up the air a bit and extended our fossil fuel window, it’s still only a temporary solution.

At some point, we’ll be left only with coal. And coal is dirty. Maybe the year 2200 won’t be about space travel, but reopening coal mines since it’s all we’ll have left. And we’ll have to convert coal into the other petroleum uses we’ll need it for – and this process is by itself an energy‐guzzling one.

Know this – coal is in major decline in all industrialized countries, including China. The main reason is the pollution effects, in the ground, water, and air. It’s not declining in availability, but in preference. And it will be a hard sell to get nations to return to it as a primary fuel source.

What about Renewables?

In contrast, renewable energy, according to a BP study, will account for over a third of the growth in power generation. By 2035, they predict it will provide 16% of global power needs. That’s a big jump from the 9% of today. (Note: the table above is for overall energy consumption, not just power).

Types of renewable energy include hydropower, biofuels, solar, wind, geothermal, and a few other options. Each of these have their own drawbacks and points in favor.

But the one thing they all do that fossil fuels cannot? They’ll never run out.

How can you avoid the coming decline in fossil fuels?

Alarming Energy Trend #4: China and India are Growing in Every Way

Just like the farming trends, this isn’t a bad thing. Growth is good. Modernization is good. Poverty, despair, hunger, disease – these are all in decline in these two huge nations. So it’s good they are growing.

But this report is about energy. And when two nations, each of which have over a billion people, convert from extreme poverty and rural lifestyles to wealthier and more modernized ones, that means colossal energy needs.

China and India alone will account for about half of the increase in worldwide GDP over the next twenty years. And their energy consumption, according to BP, will correspondingly increase by 34% in that time.

34%! For over two billion people, supplying a 34% increase in energy demands is staggering.

Do you see how all these trends merge into a really serious problem? Let’s do a quick review:

1. Farmland has all been used. All we can do is improve our productivity, and that means big energy increases.

2. Developing nations – including China and India especially – will be needing a big share of those agricultural increases – as well as all the other energy needs that come with a modernized society.

3. Fossil fuels will increasingly decline at the very time the rest of the world will need them at the levels the US and Europe have been taking for granted for almost 100 years.

4. Population keeps growing too, projected to be nearly 9 billion by 2035, so simple conservation efforts will at best keep things even, but they won’t extend the life of any major sources of energy.

The BP Energy Outlook from 2016 says it best: “Population and income are the key drivers behind growing demand for energy.”

Why? If you modernize a culture with all the technology, clothing, materials, toys, gadgets, health advancements, software (and phone and computer) dependence, food, and all the rest – you cannot do that without using way more energy.

Those inventions and conveniences, by their very nature, use tons more energy than the poverty‐ stricken subsistence living some of these countries are emerging from. It’s unavoidable. Do you want people to stay in extreme poverty, or use more energy and prosper? That is the choice. Here it is as a formula:

More Income + More People = More Energy

China went through a heavy coal stage that should be instructive to all of us. Remember the Beijing Olympics? How much attention they got for their terrible air quality? You could literally see the air.

That’s not usually a good thing.

So when oil and natural gas run out, if we switch to a coal‐majority global economy at that time, within a few decades that’s what all the world’s major cities would be like. Not too pretty.

Coal has its place, and probably always will. But you don’t want it to provide 80% of your energy. That’s a smelly, disease‐inducing, chokingly terrible prospect.

How are other nations going to cope with dwindling supplies of cheap energy?

We’re At an Energy Crossroads The question now becomes – where are we going to get all this energy? Hopefully you see how all these trends are converging to a point sometime in the near‐future. Someday, maybe 20 years, maybe 50 or 80 years, the world will reach that point.

A point at which energy needs will be greater than ever, but the fossil fuel sources will be drying up.

If that day ever comes, life will get bad, really, really fast. That’s why we need to do what the people who say oil will never run out claim will “just happen.” It won’t just happen. It will only happen if people see the threat, understand its true nature, and take steps now to avoid it by prolonging the day it arrives.

Are you going to just assume some amazing new technology will get invented in the nick of time to avert disaster? Or are you going to make real choices and decisions today that will redirect the future we know will otherwise come?

Before we give that question full attention though, there’s one more alarming trend you need to know.

This one is the most shocking, and depressing, of all.

It’s shocking not just because of the facts, but because of the denial surrounding it. This is about energy waste. And we’re not talking about leaving your lights on too long.

If we’re really serious about turning the tide of our energy future, don’t we need to look at all aspects of our lives? Let’s look now at the most shocking energy trend of the modern age.

Alarming (and Shocking) Energy Trend #5: Marijuana Legalization

This is in no way meant to be funny. In fact, it’s deadly serious. This is not a political statement. It’s an energy statement.

Marijuana legalization is circling the globe. Dozens of states have legalized it either for medicinal use, or for all uses. Other countries have as well, and this trend appears to be on the upswing. It’s already a $4.4 billion industry in the US alone, and it’s only fully legal in a handful of states.

But though it’s only been fully legal for a few years, a little‐expected fallout has already reared its head:

Marijuana production uses astonishing amounts of energy, far eclipsing even the most wasteful uses of energy in other sectors.

Before we get to specifics, though, why does this matter? After all, it’s just one “crop,” right? It matters for two reasons:

1) The scope, which as you’re about to see, is gargantuan 2) The fact it directly cancels out energy gains we’ve worked so hard to achieve, and for a product that in 93% of cases has no practical value

The marijuana energy problem is real, as you’re about to see, and this problem is compounded by the fact that people who are traditionally in favor of renewable energy and environmental stewardship also tend to be in favor of marijuana legalization.

As you’re about to discover, those two positions are diametrically opposed. You simply cannot be in favor of both of them without being a walking contradiction. Unless, that is, the cannabis industry decides en masse to pursue renewable energy as its primary source of energy. We would whole‐ heartedly support this choice.

So, we’ll present this in three cases, and then draw some scary conclusions about that five‐petal leaf and the doom it spells for our energy future.

Case #1: Electricity Outages in Oregon (Source: AP, Nov 6, 2015)

From July to November in 2015, indoor marijuana farms blew out seven transformers in Pacific Power’s share of Oregon’s electrical grid. Local crews from PGE say marijuana causes about 400 such blowouts every year in their sector.

400 per year! Can you believe that? Just from pot? According to Pacific Power director Roger Blank, a very small pot farm of just four plants and normal lights “is like hooking up 29 refrigerators that run 24/7.”

Think about that. As we keep going, remember – this is for pot. Not something that’s necessary for the vast majority of people who use it. Because we’re going to scale this up, and you’ll be mortified when you see the numbers.

Case #2: Sapping Power in Colorado (Source: Bloomberg news, Jennifer Oldham, Dec 21, 2015)

As early as 2012, indoor pot growing farms used $6 billion in energy costs. That’s billion. The entire pharmaceutical industry, in comparison, used only $1 billion worth. And in 2012, marijuana wasn’t fully legal anywhere yet!

In 2014, more than half the demand for new power in Colorado came from the 1234 licensed marijuana farms. That means almost all the energy we’re using now that we weren’t using before is going to pot.

Not to build bridges. Not to create cures to disease. Not to grow food. Not to drive our kids to school in a car.

These few growers in Colorado use as much power as 35,000 households.

And again – these are facts. This should not be about ideology. These are the real numbers.

Why do they need so much energy? Some facilities use 1000 Watt bulbs – dozens of them. These are so bright, the workers have to wear sunglasses. And they’re so hot, they need huge air conditioners and fans, as well as scrubbers and humidifiers to keep the plants happy at a toasty 75oF. Even in the winter, which in Colorado gets pretty frosty.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council predicts that by 2035, pot growers will use an average of 300 megawatts. This is enough to power an entire small city. One 5000 square foot farm used 29,000 kWh every month – five times more than a commercial building of a similar size.

Though unrelated to energy specifically, this farm also produces over 30,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every month. Do we really care about climate change? Do we really care? The data suggests we care a lot more about getting high than we do about our energy future.

And just to drive you bonkers, Arcata, a city in California, discovered that 10% of its entire population was growing marijuana on their property. And most of these people were getting subsidized electric rates because they reported earning low income. Using gobs of energy to grow pot, and at subsidized rates.

Case #3: Seattle Ignores the Problem (Source: Seattle Times, Bob Young, May 12, 2013)

The Seattle City Council wrote rules concerning large indoor pot farms. They allowed people to use up to 50,000 square feet (that’s more than an acre) to grow pot – within city limits.

And at the very same time, they produced a Climate Action Plan, with the explicit goal of making the city carbon neutral by 2050. No one mentioned, at any public meeting, how pot would compromise this

goal. Notably, even the Sierra Club said they had other priorities, and didn’t push at all regarding the exorbitant use of energy by marijuana.

They’re all in denial.

Marijuana and Energy – Some Stats and Projections To produce one kilogram of pot, grown indoors, produces as much air pollution as driving across the entire country. SEVEN TIMES.

To produce a single joint is like leaving a lightbulb on for 25 hours, and uses enough energy to produce 18 pints of beer.

In California, indoor pot farms now use 9% of all residential electricity in the state.

Oregon has found itself having to build whole new substations just to meet the demands of the pot growers. We’re talking brand new energy infrastructure.

Some large pot farms spend more than $1 million a month on energy.

Evan Mills, a scientist at Berkeley, sums up the effect of pot on energy conservation like this: "Consumers seeking a green lifestyle are likely unaware that their cannabis use could cancel out their otherwise low‐carbon footprint."

Do you see why we’ve included this as an alarming trend? According to Ethan Howland of Utilitydive.com, marijuana already accounts for 1% of electricity use in the US. And it’s not even legal yet for recreational use in most states. (Coincidentally – solar energy also recently passed the 1% mark in its share of global energy use. See what we mean by wasted conservation efforts?).

Another modern massive user of energy is data centers. You know these as the “cloud,” where all our files and emails and texts and images and passwords get mysteriously stored. These data centers also use gobs of energy, about 200 Watts per square foot.

But guess what? An average marijuana farm uses the same amount. And across the country, marijuana already uses about a third of what all the data centers combined are using.

Put these two modern energy uses together – and you see where this is heading. Then go back to the other four trends. Data centers will be needed in every country that modernizes its economy.

Pot?

Let’s take these numbers and do some projections.

Projection 1: If Colorado’s pot growers are using the energy equivalent of 35,000 homes, remember that Colorado is a small state in terms of population. It has 5.5 million people. The US as a whole has nearly 325 million.

So if every state legalizes pot and the ratios scale up, over 2 million homes will have their energy use doubled by pot growers. If the average home has four people, then that’s the energy equivalent of 8 million people.

Do this globally – Europe, South America, Australia, Asia, Africa. Pot will double the normal energy use of hundreds of millions of people, if it gets legalized in the majority of the world.

Projection 2: One kilo of marijuana is the equivalent of driving across the country seven times. Across the country is approximately 2500 miles. To produce one kilo of pot requires the same amount of energy as driving 17,500 miles.

So, if we produce 1 million kilos of pot, which is probably very low, even with so few states and nations having legalized it yet, this would require the equivalent of 17.5 billion miles of driving.

What’s the point of showing these (low‐end) projections?

It’s simply to help you see that we are using up our finite energy resources much faster than we should be. And, as Mills said, pot is literally cancelling out all the energy efficiency gains of the last 30 years.

This can only accelerate us faster to the date when we run dry of easy‐to‐access fossil fuels.

Let’s add this to the previous trends, and see where we are:

• Dozens of nations will be modernizing their agriculture and drastically increasing their energy needs in the next 50 years. And the energy they’ll have to invest to produce the required higher yields will be greater than what they get out of it, just like us.

• China and India, with over 2.5 billion people already today, will require far more energy to meet their daily needs than they do now.

• Fossil fuels are dwindling. Oil will probably go first, followed by natural gas. It will happen. The only question is in whose lifetime – yours or your grandkid’s? Coal will be around, but it’s not a viable option as our only primary source of energy.

• And the date of permanent disappearance of these fuels is, as you read this, accelerating at an unimaginable rate due to the legalization of marijuana (in addition to other modern energy gobblers like data centers).

With energy conservation efforts literally going up in smoke, what options remain?

Alarming Energy Trend #6: Savings from Solar Energy are Already Exploding

As you’ve read this report, each trend finished by asking a question. Here once more are the five questions we face as we grapple with our energy future:

1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

What can we do to supply the growing energy needs of agriculture across the world?

What can you do to avoid the coming energy price increases?

How can you avoid the coming decline in fossil fuels?

How are other nations going to cope with dwindling supplies of cheap energy?

With energy conservation efforts literally going up in smoke, what options remain?

The 6th trend shows us the answer.

By 2021, BP estimates 825 gigawatts of new solar energy capacity will be installed worldwide. That’s a 42% increase from 2016. They project a 16% share of global energy production for renewables by 2035, up from 9% today. That’s nearly double. This will happen for three reasons:

1) Falling prices 2) More favorable policies from governments 3) Improved technology

You see – technology improves everywhere, in every sector. But in fossil fuels, technology only extends the inevitable date of decline. With solar, technology makes it more affordable, more efficient, and more visually attractive. It makes it better. You can’t make oil “better.”

Fossil fuels will only rise in costs as supplies become tighter.

Solar energy will only fall in price as it becomes easier to get more energy from the sun.

Check out the graph:

No other industry can claim such an off‐the‐cliff drop in prices over a 40 year period. What does that mean for you?

It means you could miss out on enormous lifetime savings on your energy costs. If you had installed solar panels ten years ago that cancelled out your electric bill, you would have avoided all the price increases and uncertainty from your utility. But don’t feel bad, because the savings from the last ten years pale compared to what will happen in the next 20 years.

As the other five alarming trends you’ve read here accelerate, and energy costs rise, and supplies dwindle even faster than the projections because of all the waste, and the growing nations around the world require more to meet their needs – the amount of money you’ll save with solar panels will compound like an exploding stock fund.

Why? Because your use of energy isn’t going to change that much. This is very important to understand.

Most houses, farms, and businesses don’t change their energy use that much. Sure if a business expands, so will its energy needs. But all things being equal, you’ll very likely use about the same number of kilowatt‐hours next year as you did this year.

Inflation‐Proof Energy So, on a ‘per‐kWh’ basis, if inflation never happened, your energy costs would barely change over the years. But there is inflation. And that’s what this paper is really about: Money and increasing costs. And for energy, they won’t just go up. They will go up exponentially.

But if you have solar panels – you bypass the effects of inflation. Energy inflation is like a huge Pro‐Bowl linebacker barreling toward you, the tiny running back fresh out of college. But solar panels are your “moves,” and you just step aside as the linebacker dives for you and misses completely.

If you’re using 500 kWh per month, and you install solar panels that generate 500 kWh per month, your energy costs will be zero. 10 years later, if you’re still using 500 kWh per month, your costs are still zero.

Your usage doesn’t go up over time. With fossil fuels, the cost per kWh does. So your utility might charge you 15% more after ten years for the same amount of energy usage. See that? You pay more, but you don’t get more for it.

With solar panels, the energy gets produced on‐site. And however many kWh your system produces, you have that much energy. Solar is inflation‐proof energy.

That’s why now is the best time to go solar – the best time in history. Look at this graph:

Except for natural gas, what are all the lines doing? They’re going DOWN. And natural gas may be enjoying an upswing at the moment, but that’s only because oil and coal are being used less in comparison.

But the renewables curve (which includes all forms of renewable energy, not just solar) began to spike upward not so long ago, and that trend will only continue.

Basic economics – supply and demand. You can see the fossil fuel market share already going down. This is the early stage of a permanent decline because of a lower supply. That means prices for those fuels will eventually rise – dramatically.

As the supply of renewables increases, prices will keep falling. So if someone installs solar panels this year, they will reap energy cost savings over the next 25 years, and those savings will get larger each year because of avoided inflation. Each year you don’t have to pay for ever‐higher prices for traditional energy, your savings magnify.

Three Inflation‐Proof Examples Solar Direct Coastal Solar does solar assessments all the time. Part of what this includes is a projection of energy cost savings over a 25‐year period. Why 25 years? Because our panels are under warranty for that long.

To put some numbers to all this, here are some highlights from three projects:

Solar Savings Example 1 – Midsize Business: In Year 1 after installing solar panels, a particular company was going to save $11,962.

By Year 25, they’d be saving $21,741 – per year. Over that 25 year period, they were projected to save over $340,000 – and that’s after the initial installation costs were subtracted. That’s net savings. This was only a 55kW system. That’s a good size, but not that big for a business.

Here’s a chart with numbers for every five years. These projections assume 3% energy cost inflation per year. But that’s probably low, for all the alarming reasons you’ve just read about. As the end of that 25 year period approaches, the more likely scenario is an ever‐increasing inflation percentage as oil and natural gas supplies finally begin to shrink in a way everyone can see.

Year After Installation

Energy Cost Savings

Year 1 Year 5 Year 10 Year 15 Year 20 Year 25

$11,961 $13,268 $15,011 $16,984 $19,216 $21,741

This particular business would fully recover their initial costs within the first five years. This is because, in addition to the free energy you get from the sun, the US government currently offers generous tax incentives for solar energy. The details of those aren’t the point of this report.

But what you do need to know is – those incentives are set to expire in the near future. There’s no guarantee they’ll be extended either.

So why is now the time to go solar? Because with the incentives, solar costs may never again be this low again. And the savings you’ll reap over the 25‐year warranty lifetime of the panels will multiply every year because of the energy inflation you’ll be avoiding.

Solar Savings Example 2 – Typical Residence:

We did a home/small farm solar assessment for a 10kW system. A typical residential solar system will be from 4 – 10 kW in size.

For this small farm, they projected to save $2635 their first year. By year 25, their yearly savings – again on the low end because it assumes only 3% energy inflation – project to $4789. They expected a full cost recovery by year 8, meaning 17 years of pure energy cost savings that add up to over $63,000.

Here’s their table:

Year After Installation

Energy Cost Savings

Year 1 Year 5 Year 10 Year 15 Year 20 Year 25

$2635 $2923 $3307 $3741 $4233 $4789

How would you like to save $60,000 over 25 years for doing no work?

Solar Savings Example 3 – Large Commercial Operation: Finally – here’s a projection for a big company. It’s both a farm and processing plant. They installed a 1.09MW solar energy array. A Megawatt is 1000 kilowatts, so this array is about 20 times larger than the one in the first example.

As of this writing, we don’t yet have the year to year amounts. But the average annual savings from this array add up to a dazzling $267,000 per year over 25 years. That’s well over $6 million in savings due to solar energy.

Your Energy Action Plan

The numbers and predictions and data you’ve seen in this report are real. You can check all the sources yourself – we’ve included them as you read.

Here’s what you now know:

 Energy costs are going to skyrocket as the global economy tries to outgrow its current limitations—  Agriculture will modernize across the globe—  China and India will demand far more energy to build societies like Europe and North America have taken for granted for decades. South America, the rest of Asia, and Africa won’t be far behind—

 And energy waste due to recreational marijuana being legalized across the world, as well as other extreme energy uses of our tech‐dependent world, will sap the already limited supplies of oil and natural gas, and wipe out any gains we might make through energy conservation—

The only step you can take to escape the coming energy supply shortage and corresponding price balloons is to take control of your own energy supply.

Of the renewable options, solar is the only one that can be quickly and easily installed (the huge 1.09 MW array only took a month to install).

It requires minimal maintenance.

It doesn’t hurt the birds (windmills), or the fish (dams).

It’s by far the most practical – every home on the block can’t very well install their own dam or windmill, can they?

It has predictable costs and guaranteed savings.

There are huge tax incentives that cut the initial costs to affordable levels.

And besides all that, the costs to install them have fallen so much in the last five years alone.

That’s great news! You haven’t missed out yet! Don’t you hate it when you hear about some great opportunity, but when you start looking into it, you realize the wave has already passed? Kind of like buying stock. Everybody buys after a company is successful and huge. It’s too late by then if you’re aiming for life‐changing results.

Now is the greatest time in history to go solar if you want life‐altering results. Not last year. Not next year. Now is the time to lock in 25 years of warranty‐protected energy cost savings and inflation‐defying energy security.

Here’s your one‐step energy action plan:

Solar Direct Step 1: If you live in the Southeast United States, simply contact Coastal Solar and request your own personal solar energy assessment. We specialize in farm and agriculture solar installations, and we also work with homes and businesses of all sizes.

You can reach us here: office: 786.441.2727 mobile: 305.297.9360 toll-free: 800.333.9276 alternate: 941.209.1433 fax: 941.359.3848 [phone number] info@solarbuyersclub.org | brainforhumanity@gmail.com | offgridjourney@gmail.com | sales@solardirect.com [email] OffGrid.SolarBuyers.Club | www.facebook.com/SafeEnergy | www.SolarBuyersClub.org www.coastalsolar.com www.facebook.com/SolarBuyersClub.org | LinkedIn.com/in/brainforhumanity If you live in a different state, find a reputable local solar installation company, and do the same thing.

Energy is the lifeblood of nations.

Sidestep the coming price roller coaster.

Escape the wastefulness that will plague the system and speed up the decline of fossil fuels.

Find out what you can earn from your own solar energy generation system.

Request a personal solar energy assessment.