Solar Wealth

Introduction

Solar Wealth is a measure of how much energy is available to a population that currently is or may eventually be harvested from the sun. Historically, countries have relied on agricultural crops to harvest most of their solar wealth. Agricultural crops harvest ~1-4% of the solar power available. Methods such as solar bioreactor ponds filled with photosynthetic bacteria could achieve theoretical harvesting efficiencies of 8-9%. These could produce alcohol, hydrogen, methane or even biomass utilized for food production. Solar cells could eventually reach efficiencies as high as 30-40%, though the more common and less expensive cells currently available range from 5-18%. Over the course time, as technological skills increase and higher production volumes decrease the costs of both engineered bacteria and solar cells, the costs of the necessary infrastructure to harvest solar power at increasing efficiencies will become increasingly less expensive.

The table below takes a number of countries, including those with large populations, as well as those in areas where population pressures may be causing significant disruption and examines the current Solar Wealth and the future potential.

Solar Wealth by Country
Country	Population	Land Area	Arable	Arable Fraction	Insolation	Energy yield	Energy/Person/Day (J)		Power/Person (W)
	July 2000	km²	km²	%	W/m²	J/day	total land	arable land	total land	arable land
Australia	19,169,083	7,617,930	4,570,758	60%	276	79,608	3.2E+10	1.9E+10	366,169	219,701
Bangladesh	129,194,224	133,910	104,450	78%	285	82,081	8.5E+07	6.6E+07	985	768
Brazil	172,860,370	8,456,510	2,283,258	27%	307	88,539	4.3E+09	1.2E+09	50,132	13,536
Canada	31,281,092	9,220,970	737,678	8%	147	42,456	1.3E+10	1.0E+09	144,852	11,588
China	1,261,832,482	9,326,410	4,942,997	53%	249	71,708	5.3E+08	2.8E+08	6,134	3,251
Egypt	68,359,979	995,450	199,090	2%	276	79,608	1.2E+09	2.3E+07	13,417	268
India	1,014,003,817	2,973,190	1,783,914	60%	295	84,852	2.5E+08	1.5E+08	2,880	1,728
Indonesia	224,784,210	1,826,440	310,495	17%	307	88,277	7.2E+08	1.2E+08	8,302	1,411
Iraq	22,675,617	432,162	90,754	21%	256	73,833	1.4E+09	3.0E+08	16,286	3,420
Iran	65,619,636	1,636,000	605,320	37%	260	74,862	1.9E+09	6.9E+08	21,602	7,933
Israel	5,842,454	20,330	4,879	24%	262	75,568	2.6E+08	6.3E+07	3,043	730
Japan	126,771,662	374,774	48,717	13%	245	70,614	2.1E+08	2.7E+07	2,416	314
New Zealand	3,819,762	268,670	158,515	59%	225	64,904	4.6E+09	2.7E+09	52,837	31,174
Palestine	3,152,361	6,000	3,414	57%	262	75.568	2.7E+08	1.5E+08	3,108	1,722
Pakistan	141,553,775	778,720	256,978	33%	267	76,845	4.2E+08	1.4E+08	4,893	1,615
Russia	146,001,176	16,995,800	2,039,496	12%	147	42,456	4.9E+09	5.9E+08	57,202	6,864
Saudi Arabia	22,023,506	1,960,582	1,137,138	58%	282	81,292	7.2E+09	4.2E+09	83,759	48,580
Ukraine	49,153,027	603,700	428,627	71%	192	55,300	6,8E+08	4.8E+08	7,861	5,581
United States	275,562,673	9,158,960	4,029,942	44%	237	63,684	2.3E+09	1.0E+09	26,303	11,573

Land Area is the total land area a country has. The Arable land area is the area under cultivation and pasture land. This is used because it represents land cleared of trees which might easily be converted to solar power uses such as solar power harvesting ponds or solar cell arrays. Obviously this is only an approximation because it does not include the large amount of unproductive, but non-forested land in countries such as Australia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt (deserts) as well as Canada and Russia (tundra) which may be relatively easy to convert to solar power harvesting applications. It also may overstate resources in countries such as the U.S. or New Zealand where some of the pasture land may be relatively mountainous and may therefore be poor choice for solar development. The insolation is an approximate amount of power received based on the latitude of the country. The Energy yield is the Insolation times the solar power harvesting efficiency based on an 8 hour day. A relatively low solar power harvesting efficiency of 1% is chosen because to make the power available at night may require storage conversion losses. The final Power/Person is based continual use over a 24 hour day.

Discussion

In the following discussion, comparative terms such as wealthier or poorer refer to a per capita basis rather than total productivity or absolute net worth of a country.

One can consider human beings to be 100W machines. One conclusion that may be drawn from the table is that Japan and Egypt are currently the most limited by their arable land followed by Bangladesh and Israel who are equally poor. These countries only have several times of the potential energy available that their population requires simply to survive. It may also suggest why Israel has been creating settlements in the West Bank, because the Palestinian state (the West Bank + the Gaza Strip) has relatively more potential energy available per person than Israel.

India is poorer than China and China may have greater opportunities to take advantage of uncultivatable land in its driest regions. Indonesia seems poorer than either India or China, perhaps due to the lack of development of much of the available land. Pakistan is slightly wealthier than India and has the potential of slightly surpassing China. It depends largely what fractions of the currently uncultivated land in Pakistan and China would be too mountainous for solar development.

The richest countries by far are Australia and Saudi Arabia, followed by New Zealand. Canada could become very wealthy and Russia could become moderately wealthy if a greater fraction of their land were developed. Egypt has the largest upside potential and will be wealthier than India, China and Pakistan if its large desert regions can be developed. In contrast, Israel and Palestine seemed destined to remain relatively poor while Japan and Bangladesh will be the poorest of all. The major countries of the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Egypt all have significant potential to improve the wealth of their citizens. For the most populated countries, China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and to a lesser extent Indonesia, the upside potential is much more limited.

Sources

CIA, World Fact Book (2000).

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Created: November 1, 2001
Last Modified: November 1, 2001