There’s a non-sequiter in that statement: the authors jump directly from “the sun emits an enormous amount of energy” to “it is feasible to capture and store several orders of magnitude more electricity than is currently consumed by human civilization using only solar panels and batteries.” That is a huge, huge leap.
I've heard this suggested before, but seriously, 5.1 million square kilometers of solar panels? Seems to me that we're a long way off from that kind of undertaking.
Aka less than 1% of 1% of land is enough for solar at today's energy use levels using 20% efficient panels. More reolistically wind and hydro are unlikely to be completly replaced by solar any time soon.
PS: Most homes can meet there total energy needs and have room left on there roof which says something about energy density.
You are confusing “energy use” with “electricity use.” Things like natural gas heating (especially if you live somewhere with really cold winters), gasoline for ground transportation, and jet fuel for air travel, as well as all the different ways these inputs go into, e.g., growing the food we eat and manufacturing household items, form a very large part of the average person in a developed country’s energy use.
Home != People otherwise I would have said People.
Anyway, Solar is actually great for home heating and hot water needs and solar hot water is generally more cost effective to install than rooftop eletric solar. Oddly enough installing solar pool heaters are cheap and fairly common even though they cover a fairly small window over the course of a year.
PS: Rooftop solar ~20% efficient rooftop home heating ~90% efficient.
