This section shows a technical development that we think will be one of the technical developments of the next 50 years involved in holidays and tourism. The technical development discussed is solar energy. It's not used a lot at this moment but will become more and more important in the future world! Lots of appliances used in the world of tourism can now be powered by solar energy and are a lot cheaper.

Solar energy

Now, in 2009, solar energy isn’t very popular. 0.1 percent of all the energy, 0.9 billion kilowatts/hours, is solar energy. Although this type of energy is increasing, it is still very expensive and because of that it isn’t used a lot. Solar energy is stimulated by the government because it is a environmental friendly source of energy. In 2059 it is likely that we will run out of  fossil fuels. Because of that we will need other kinds of energy to increase. Therefore we will need an enormous increase in alternative energies. Solar energy will be an important source, but also other sorts of energies will get more important. A solar panel absorbs the solar radiation  which passes through glass and the hits a black coated plate. This plate heats up. There's a pipe above the plate which catches the heat and then transports the heat to a storage tank. This way of collecting heat is quite efficient but it can still be improved.



A solar panel
(Source 6 visible at bibliography)
(Source: explanation working solar panel visible at bibliography)

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