The mysterious kidnapping that may have delayed solar energy – 10/20/2023 – Environment

One of the arguments presented in defense of fossil fuels is that they were a historical necessity, as there were no viable substitutes (for energy generation) for much of the 20th century.

For this reason, humanity would owe a debt of gratitude to fossil fuels, as they boosted our development.

What if I told you that there was a viable alternative and that it may have been sabotaged by fossil fuel industry interests since its inception?

When researching the economic viability of innovations in the clean energy sector, I came across a little-known story: that of Canadian inventor George Cove, one of the first entrepreneurs in the renewable energy sector.

Cove invented home solar panels, which look exceptionally similar to those installed in homes today. They even included a rudimentary battery to keep power available when the sun wasn’t shining in the sky.

But that wasn’t in the 1970s. Not even in the 1950s. It was in 1905.

Cove’s company was called Sun Electric Generator Corporation and was based in New York, United States. Its capital was US$5 million (around US$160 million or R$810 million, in current values).

The idea of ​​solar panels already received widespread press attention in 1909. The American magazine Modern Electrics, for example, highlighted that “in two sunny days… [o aparelho] will store enough electrical energy to light an average home for a week.”

The publication highlighted that cheap solar energy could free people from poverty, “bringing low-cost light, heat and energy and freeing people from the constant struggle for bread.”

The report continues, speculating how even planes could be powered by batteries charged by the sun. A clean energy future seemed to be available to anyone who wanted to enjoy it.

Hidden interests?

But, according to news published in The New York Herald on October 19, 1909, George Cove was kidnapped.

The condition imposed for his release was that he give up his solar patent and close the company. Cove refused, but was eventually released near the Bronx Zoo in New York.

After this incident, his solar energy business failed — which seems strange. After all, in the years before the kidnapping, he had developed several models of the solar device, each more advanced than the other.

I cannot say for sure whether there were hidden interests involved.

Some people at the time accused Cove of faking the kidnapping to get publicity. But that doesn’t make sense, especially since there was no shortage of press attention for his invention.

Other sources suggest that a former investor could be behind what happened.

What is known, however, is that young companies in the fossil fuel sector used to develop unscrupulous practices against their competitors.

And solar energy was a threat, as it is an inherently democratic technology — after all, everyone has access to the sun — that can empower citizens and communities. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, require the building of business empires.

Standard Oil, led by the world’s first billionaire (John D. Rockefeller, 1839-1937), completely crushed competitors, forcing the American government to institute antitrust laws to combat monopolies.

Similarly, legendary inventor Thomas Edison (1847-1931) electrocuted horses, farm animals and even a human being in line for execution, using the alternating current of his rival Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). The objective was to show the dangers of alternating current, to favor Edison’s own technology – direct current.

The company Sun Electric, owned by Cove, with its autonomous solar panels, would have harmed Edison’s business, which envisaged the construction of an electrical grid using coal energy.

There were some isolated efforts to develop solar energy after the Cove kidnapping. But there was no important commercial activity for the next four decades, until the concept was revived by Bell Labs, the research arm of the Bell Telephone Company, in the United States.

Meanwhile, the coal and oil sectors grew at unprecedented speeds, supported by government policies and taxpayer dollars. Meanwhile, the climate crisis was likely already underway.

Four lost decades

When I discovered the story of Cove, I wanted to know what the world had lost in those 40 years. To do this, I developed an intellectual exercise.

I used a concept known as Wright’s Law, which applies to most renewable goods. This is the idea that, as production increases, costs are reduced due to process improvements and learning.

I applied this concept to calculate the year in which solar energy would have become cheaper than coal.

To do this, I considered that solar energy would have grown modestly between 1910 and 1950 and estimated how long this additional “experience” would have translated into cost reduction.

In a world in which Cove was successful and solar energy competed with fossil fuels from the beginning, solar-generated electricity would have surpassed coal in 1997, with Bill Clinton president of the United States and at the height of the Spice Girls.

In reality, this only happened in 2017.

Alternative century

Of course, this estimate assumes that the energy system would not change. And it’s possible that the entire trajectory of energy innovations would have been very different if solar energy had been available as early as 1910 and never disappeared.

Perhaps more research money would go toward developing batteries that would help decentralize solar energy, for example. In this case, the power grid and railways that were used to support the coal-fired economy would have received much less investment.

Alternatively, other, more recent advances in industrialization could have caused solar energy to take off, so that Cove’s continued work would not bring significant advances.

Ultimately, it’s impossible to know exactly which path humanity would have taken, but I’d wager that eliminating a 40-year gap in solar energy development could have saved the world immense amounts of carbon emissions.

It can feel painful to ponder this big “what if” as weather conditions deteriorate around us. But this analysis can offer us something useful: the knowledge that producing energy from the Sun is nothing radical, not even new. It’s an idea as old as the fossil fuel companies themselves.

The dominance of fossil fuels into the 21st century was not inevitable. It was a choice, about which few of us had an opinion.

Fossil fuels developed initially because we were unaware of their environmental impact, and then because the lobby had become so powerful that it resisted change.

But there is still hope. Solar energy now provides the cheapest electricity humanity has ever seen. And costs continue to plummet as development progresses. The faster we walk, the greater the savings.

If we embrace the spirit of optimism seen in Cove’s time and make the right technological decisions, we can still build the solar-powered world he envisioned so many years ago.

This article was originally published on the academic news website The Conversation and republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original English version here.