We are just scratching the surface of solars potential. The sun gives the Earth more energy everyday than we could ever use. It's like a bank account with trillions of dollars. You can never spend that money. I don't care how many times you go to smoothie king, you'll never run through a trillion dollars. Likewise, the same is true with the sun. We can run out of oil and coal. The sun is a trillion dollar bank account that we just need to get access to. Our energy problems are an access problem, not an energy shortage problem. We are all powered by the sun. All of us. All the energy in the food we eat originally came from the sun. All life on Earth is solar powered. Even in the ocean, accept for some deep sea creatures that use chemosynthesis. We need to find ways to get more access. Converting UV radiation, x rays, etc. A parking lot emits more infrared than a forest because of the heat trapping of hardscape. Let's run our ACs on the same heat we use them to get rid of.
Source: Glad_Objective_1646
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It could not work without sufficient storage, and sufficient storage could not work without crippling borrowing to force accelerated lithium availability (among other things). Extracting it at that scale would also cause considerable (though comparatively minor) local habitat destruction.
Just as we speak, sodium-ion storage technology is being put into production. Sodium is cheap, universal, and its primary ecological impact is the possible use of dirty energy to extract it from salt or whatever other common compound you choose. Once clean energy is bootstrapped, sodium is also clean. *Now*, solar can work.