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Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system
In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system.
There’s better news yet from India, now the world’s fastest-growing major economy and most populous nation, where data last month showed that from January through April a surge in solar production kept the country’s coal use flat and also cut the amount of natural gas used during the same period in 2024 by a quarter. It was at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, that, on April 25, 1954, a trio of researchers announced the invention of the first practical photovoltaic cell: a silicon-based device that managed to convert about six per cent of the sunlight that fell on it into usable energy. The United Kingdom—where, after all, fossil fuel really began—now has so much wind power that in 2024 its carbon emissions fell below what they were in 1879, a year that saw the start of the Anglo-Zulu War and the marriage of Prince Arthur, Queen Victoria’s seventh child, to Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia.
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