environmental science
Warming up to a New Look at Solar Energy
by Robert Rampani Photo by Roy Bury. [CC0 1.0]
F
lipping on a light switch. Charging a cell phone. Driving to Starbucks. For most of us, especially in the routine-filled world of virtual learning, our everyday actions with power consumption are barely an afterthought. There seem to be so many more pressing issues than a potential energy crisis – after all, is that not for the smartest minds of our generation to worry about? Such apathy towards the world’s tremendous consumption of energy is one of the many reasons the production and use of fossil fuels are so rampant across many parts of the globe. While the ramifications of such use go without saying, continued use of fossil fuels and the limits of those resources has created, albeit gradually, one of the greatest problems science has to face in the twenty-first century. Dr. Gerald Meyer, a Professor of Chemistry at UNCChapel Hill, remembers sitting with his father in a long, tedious line for gasoline during the OPEC oil crisis of the 1970s when the apathy of the reliance on petroleum was turned on its head. Dr. Gerald Meyer, PhD. The strong depen-
dence on the limited supply of fossil fuels, especially gasoline, was increasingly apparent during the peak days of the scare. From that moment forward, Dr. Meyer has dedicated much of his life’s work to discovering novel, renewable ways to meet the energy requirements of the world through his research in inorganic chemistry. According to Dr. Meyer, the limited supply of fos-
10
Figure 1. Hubbert’s Peak, showing peak oil production during the 2020s. Image courtesy of WikiCommons.
sil fuels should not be news to anyone – including large energy-producing corporations.2 In the 1950s, M. King Hubbert, a groundbreaking geologist who worked for the Shell Oil Company, developed what is now known
