No, I'm stating the opinion of an environmental activist, Amos. Because you don't like that opinion doesn't make me intransigent, obstreperous and conclusively ill-informed."

I would also like to point out to Alice, the story she pointed to about the supposed MIT miracle, is nothing of the sort.

From Grist:

Energy doesn't come from the ether

The hoopla about this all over the internet is on a par with those who write as if energy efficiency creates energy. Energy efficiency uses less for a given task, but doesn't create energy. And this purportedly nearly magical catalyst can't create more energy than the electricity that goes into it. Since regular old electrolysis can be up to 70% effective, how much better can this be? You still have to produce more extra energy than you would need for all the things you want to do when the sun's not shining brightly on your panels, and you still have to convert the energy twice, losing some of it each time. But this sounds so reassuringly utopian to those who don't think rationally about the bottom line: the amount of the sun's energy that falls on a given surface in the best of circumstances and the conversion of that energy into electricity or, in this case, into electricity, then hydrogen, then back into electricity.

This hype from MIT doesn't change this basic fact: the energy of sunlight is extremely diffuse. Thus, capturing it--even in the most efficient manner possibly allowed by the laws of physics, much less with multiple energy-losing conversions in between production and use--would require vast seas of solar panels on the scale of tens of thousands of square miles to supply even only the present electrical needs of the USA (30,000 square miles, according to Scientific American, for just some of the energy we need).

But you can tell from the excitement online that this marriage of two of the most-exaggerated energy panaceas of the unrealistic future has the dreamers' hearts all aflutter. Sunshine is wonderful, but it won't provide all the energy we need. Nor will sunshine and wind. And MIT isn't going to change that. You can't beat the laws of physics.