SOLAR ENERGY may be the answer to our energy needs in a shorter time period than you think. Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil projects solar energy will be able to meet all the world’s energy needs 16 years from now.

Kurzweil cites the dramatic improvement curve of nanotechnology used in solar panels, and predicts it will take “eight doublings” of the technology to meet energy demand through solar. Kurzweil’s central thesis has long been that development curves of technology are an evolutionary process. Through a positive feedback loop, improvements are made that constantly raise the rate of progress, leading to a kind of hyper-exponential rate of improvement. Thus, the pace of change is always greater than it appears to mere mortals, by Kurzweil’s line of thought.

“Solar panels are coming down dramatically in cost per watt,” Kurzweil said. “And as a result of that, the total amount of solar energy is growing, not linearly, but exponentially. It’s doubling every 2 years and has been for 20 years. And again, it’s a very smooth curve.”