Fight the gas prices

[kandrathe]

... A country like Holland could have build itsself a great economy by investing in the development of such things as solar cells etc. ...

and

Or using solar power reflected by mirrors (quite a feat I must admit).

I'm sorry. Just do the math. Sunlight is a very dilute form of energy, about 1000 W/m2 so if this is incident on a solar panel of 10% efficiency then only 100W is produced per square meter of panel. Calculate just what you would use, and then the cost of the contraption to capture and store the energy to be available when you need it.

Solar Power has been a boondoggle trumpeted by the technically illiterate for over 30 years as the savior of our energy woes. The only boon in Solar Power has been for those people who have been feeding at the government trough of grants, rebates, and salaries. Solar power is too dilute to be practical in solving any major energy need. This is why you don't see a rush to cover the deserts of the USA with solar panels. As for home use, again, the energy and material costs to produce the panels are too expensive compared to buying electricity from a power plant. Those consumers gullible enough to put a $12,000 to $20,000 unit on their roofs (with the 20 year payback if the units are 100% reliable) have hardly been so impressed as to herald them as the solution for the rest of us.

Sources of Electric Power

So, the power plants will continue to burn fossil fuels filling the atmosphere with those unwanted green house gases. The supposed "Greens" will continue point at the unfounded fantasy of cheap, abundant, clean, solar power and other solar related "soft energies" as the prim rosed trail.