Leaves are the ultimate solar panel. If we're going to power more of the world with the sun, we're going to need to imitate plants, one way or another.
Enough solar energy strikes the earth in one hour to power our civilization for a year, and futurists like Ray Kurzweil see us moving to an all-solar civilization in the span of a single human lifetime.
But getting to a civilization powered entirely by renewables isn't going to happen with current technology. Traditional solar panels might become cheaper, but the laws of physics say they can't become that much more efficient. Not to mention that the resources required to build the kind of desert-spanning solar farms that would be required to replace even a percentage point or two of our current energy mix boggle the mind.
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