When I began researching for Solaris Insertion, I had settled on solar energy as a major plot point. I knew I wanted my antagonist to be an Islamic terrorist who harnesses solar energy in a way that has not been done by the West. I first read about solar chemical processes on Bill Gates’s website. As with other solar energy processes, solar chemical processes have a lot of potential. There are a good number of scientists working on the technology. For a number of reasons, it has yet to be tapped to its full potential.
The elegance of solar chemical technology caught my eye, and I decided to settle on that technology for the book. Rather than convert sunlight directly into electricity by exciting electrons into higher energy levels as photovoltaic technology does, solar chemical processes convert solar energy into fuel. This kind of process is analogous to what plants do in photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, plants convert sunlight, CO2, and water into glucose molecules, which it then uses for energy. This is important because, firstly, solar chemical processes have the potential to be more efficient and, secondly, the fuel can be more easily stored. It could also help solve global warming if scientists can find a process that uses carbon dioxide as a reactant, as plants do, and take it out of the atmosphere.
According to an article in Scientific American, a typical photovoltaic cell can convert 23 percent or so of the sunlight it captures into energy. If scientists can discover a process that has as good or better efficiency, takes CO2 out of the air, and is cheaper to produce, it could be revolutionary. Here’s hoping that happens sooner rather than later.