While we contemplate on these glooming prospects, let us look at the bright side—up toward the sky. Every day, the sun sends out an enormous amount of energy. The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of our planet is so vast that in 1 year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium (for nuclear energy) combined. The sun provides more energy in about an hour than the world uses in one year! Furthermore, the sun is free and does not belong to any one country. It is a local, inexhaustible resource that is clean and sustainable.
Tremendous effort is going into the development of means to capture the sun's energy, with focus on various types of solar cells. The disadvantage of solar cells is that they provide energy in the form of electricity, which cannot satisfy all of our society's energy needs.

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