Comment: You can't make an deliver PV panels without energy from oil.

The most important thing to consider in alternative energy is the amount of energy expended to acquire it compared to the amount of energy it produces over its lifetime. This is Energy Return on Energy Invested.

Oil is our most concentrated source of energy. It is a bell weather.

Today we get back 100 barrels of oil by spending the equivalent of the energy in 11 barrels of oil, leaving 89 barrels to fuel the economy. In 1930 we got back 100 barrels of oil by spending the equivalent of the energy in 1 barrel of oil. This cost has been following a compound growth curve, growing at about 3% per year. In 23 more years we will spend 22 barrels to get 100 (this is disaster). In 47 more years we will spend 44 barrels to get 100 leaving 56 to fuel what is left of the economy. This is because of the low hanging fruit principle which simply describes that we acquire the easiest to find, cheapest, most profitable, cleanest, most proximate deposits and leave the undesirable deposits for later, only later is now.

For solar to replace oil, it would need to have as great a return on energy invested as oil does today, but it doesn't. It doesn't even come close. It is marginal. So this article is simply delusional. If it wasn't subsidized by government, nobody in his right mind would consider it.

With the current return rates for oil, there is not sufficient energy to keep the economy expanding. As a society we have reached the point in the oil acquisition cost curve where we can no longer afford luxuries, higher education, advanced health care, and centralized government. These will collapse as energy costs continue to increase. All we will be able to afford is the most basic of needs like food, shelter, and minimum localized government, and those will become increasingly unaffordable too as we progress along the compound cost curves for each energy source. We certainly won't be able to afford boondoggles like PV panels; there simply isn't sufficient extra energy today to invest in anything that won't adequately replace oil, and government efforts to force us to buy these things or health care, or support a doomed federal government will only hasten the collapse of our industrial civilization.

Learn 17th century farming techniques because that is where we are headed, if we are lucky.