In this clip from "The High Energy Show" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on Feb. 8, Motley Fool contributor Travis Hoium talks about why there is significant opportunity in solar though there are challenges from an investment standpoint.
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Travis Hoium: I think solar is the biggest opportunity. I lost it here, but I'll post it in the show notes. The amount of solar energy that we get in the world is just mind-boggling. Like if you could capture every bit of solar energy that hits the earth in an hour, you could power everything in the world for a year. Like gas, electricity, oil, everything. You could replace it all for an entire year. In the U.S., I did an analysis, this is almost 10 years old now, this article, but I'll post the article in Slido. At that time, SunPower (SPWR 14.23%) solar panels, which were the most efficient on the market, I'm sure even First Solar (FSLR 18.69%) would beat that today. But if you could fill just the Mojave desert, which is less than 1% of the land space in the United States of America. If you could fill just the Mojave Desert with SunPower solar panels, you could almost produce 3x as much electricity as the entire country needs. The amount of space that you need to produce enough electricity to power the entire country, the entire world from solar is not really that big. The problem is, the sun's not always shining. We don't have great energy storage. This is going to be the multi-decade challenge over the next 10 to 20 years is, how do you take that opportunity and turn it into reality. We don't fully have that answer yet, but I think we're starting to get there with battery technology for short duration. There's some exciting things going on in hydrogen. That's the one that I still think is the biggest opportunity. It's been a hard place to make money though from an investment standpoint. Jason and I have been seeing that for 10 years.
Jason Hall: Very long time.
Hoium: And part of the challenge is that it just changes so fast.
