Sandbox 2.0

But also, solar power is already economical.

▲ podgietaru 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Many of these problems don't seem scientific at all, but rather a problem of political will.

As you said, Solar power is incredibly economical. There are plenty of ideas around putting them over farms, or parking lots en-masse to provide cleaner energy.

Access to clean drinking water, while certainly scientific in some situations, is also a problem of political will and money.

Restore and Improve Urban Infrastructure - It's infrastructure week!

▲

Marha01 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> As you said, Solar power is incredibly economical.

Not if you include the cost of needed storage.

	▲	gfarah an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yes It is. Even including batteries: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lcoe-and-valu...
	▲	UncleOxidant 44 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's going to drop a lot as sodium-ion batteries go into large-scale production.

▲

RajuChacha108 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It is not economical compared to alternatives that is why you have to have government to force people to do things. In many places such as Pakistan where solar power is not economical on paper is actually very successful in practice because it is actually profitable.

To make solar power practical and economical you need may a square foot of solar panel being able to get enough energy to power and entire home for a week

	▲	snaking0776 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		https://www.statista.com/chart/35117/levelized-cost-of-energ... Not sure what you’re talking about here. We can’t replace all energy needs with solar but it’s clearly one of the cheapest energy sources and with the added benefit of low capital expense to get started so you can set it up in distributed grids without the massive expenditure to support nuclear installations.

▲ elicash 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Seems to have been developed in 2008 (continuing through 2017), which explains the "economical" framing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Academy_of_Engineerin...

▲ xnx 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In some regions, but it would be great if it was economical in cloudy Seattle and not just the sunbelt

▲ glaslong 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

At this point the Hard Problem is policy to get out of solar's way.

▲ staplers 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

  3. Develop Carbon Sequestration Methods

If only we could invent a solar-powered, self-replicating, carbon-stacking, habitat-building machine..

▲

marcosdumay an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Not to say we shouldn't grow plants... But we can do it 2 or 3 orders of magnitude more efficiently with machines.

▲

twothreeone 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, plant more trees!

	▲	rush86999 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's what he was trying to imply