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Windmills Along the M6, photo by Bob Cox Photography
Saw this news item about the growth of green energy investment last week, which tends to correlate with the idea that the growth rate of renewable energy is not linear, but geometric (that is, doubling every n years, like Moore’s Law).
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) reports that investments in renewable energy in 2007, at $148 billion, were 60 percent above 2006, with 2008 growth continuing. Achim Steiner, head of UNEP, said:
Image via Wikipedia In his call to action two weeks ago, Al Gore compared the future development of solar electricity sources to the development of the semiconductor industry. His implication was that Moore’s Law, which reliably predicted that the price/performance of semiconductors doubled every 18 months, would also apply to photovoltaics.
ComputerWorld, in an article two weeks ago, assesses this comparison as flawed. (As did Harry Gray of Cal Tech, as I reported earlier today.)
