I was skeptical until I saw how good my sun panels work. We only have installed about 50% of capacity and they generate enough to cover 120% of our annual electric usage.
Everything here is electric except the heating and I work from home all day (with an energy-drinking PC set-up).
I live in The Netherlands - the same panels will generate about 2x as much energy a year if they were in Spain or North Africa.
I wouldn't be surprised if we could run our houses and light industry for 6 months a year purely on solar panels if we put them on every roof top in the country.
Then you look at wind: we have a huge potential for wind energy especially off-shore (and in our big lakes).
Like most of the EU the main problem is heating in winter - that requires a reduction in energy usage through insulation and heat-pumps combined with energy import from countries which have high potential for solar and wind (North Africa has huge potential here).
Everything here is electric except the heating and I work from home all day (with an energy-drinking PC set-up).
I live in The Netherlands - the same panels will generate about 2x as much energy a year if they were in Spain or North Africa.
I wouldn't be surprised if we could run our houses and light industry for 6 months a year purely on solar panels if we put them on every roof top in the country.
Then you look at wind: we have a huge potential for wind energy especially off-shore (and in our big lakes).
Like most of the EU the main problem is heating in winter - that requires a reduction in energy usage through insulation and heat-pumps combined with energy import from countries which have high potential for solar and wind (North Africa has huge potential here).