ENERGY FUTURES

A great motivation for building a solar house is knowing that the solar designer is doing their part of moving our world towards a more sustainable energy future by using designs that are energy-efficient,
use renewable sources of energy, and publicly exhibit the positive and very satisfying benefits, thereby helping to convince others to consider a solar house or commercial solar building.
It is clear from the section above, that the energy options humans on this earth have exploited since the 1850 coal boom, have a finite resource capacity and have clear environmental problems experienced by all of us. But one observation is quite clear: that our energy future does contain a sensible mix from which we can orchestrate a safe and secure energy future. this worldwide trend. 
This increase in the percentage of renewables in our portfolio of energy options has clearly begun, and we are all part of this important departure away from “business as usual.” There really is a worldwide recognition of this fact by the peoples of the earth and their governments.
Gradually and steadily, we, as a global people, are moving together toward renewables, of which solar energy plays a very important part.
Solar energy utilization by humans is really prehistoric – we know this by studying the habitats constructed by our ancestors who took sensible advantage of solar energy from the rays of the sun. 
They understood the orientation of their living areas, the storage of solar energy, and how to distribute
this thermal energy to other living spaces in their habitat.
Somehow we moved away from this prehistoric approach and the medieval trend in advancing solar energy emerged.
We became lured by the superficial enticements of cheap fossil fuels and the ease by which they could be transported, stored, and burned. 
They easily released large quantities of energy to drive new life-styles and the factories and businesses
on which they were so dependent. 
Central energy plants evolved. Now decentralized energy sources are in our future.
Solar energy technology options are much more numerous and cost-effective today than they have ever been. 
Solar energy is not just the passive heating of thermally massive walls or floors in an attempt to store heat into the late hours past sunset.
Today, solar energy involves active technologies such as PV collectors that produce useful and economic
sources of electricity which drive our electrical appliances, feed local electrical distribution micro-grids for local communities, and produce energy storage fuels (i.e. hydrogen, methanol, etc.) with the future vision of the “Hydrogen Economy” (Hoffmann, 2001; Rifkin, 2002). And what a grand vision this is indeed.