Elon Musk - Quotes about Solar Energy

CEO of Tesla MotorsSomething most people know, but don’t realize they know, is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already. If the sun wasn’t there, we’d be a frozen ice ball at 3 degrees Kelvin. The sun powers the entire system of precipitation. The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.

-Ted talk, February 23, 2013

“One square kilometer is a million square meters. And there’s one kilowatt per square meter of solar energy. So on one square kilometer, there is a gigawatt of solar energy… You could power the entire United States with about 150 to 200 square kilometers of solar panels. The entire United States. Take a corner of Utah. There’s not much going on there. I’ve been there.”

-offshore Northern Seas, August 2014I think what China’s doing in the solar panel arena is awesome because they’re lowering the cost of solar power for the world. They have these huge gigafactories that they created out in the Chinese desert with a ton of funding from the Chinese government. So it is like a giant donation from the Chinese government. Like “thanks, that’s awesome.” I think a good rule of thumb is, don’t compete with China with a commodity product. You’re really asking for trouble in that scenario.”

-SSW Conference, March 9, 2013The hard part of solar power is not the panel. It’s actually the whole system. It’s basically designing something that’s going to fit on a particular rooftop.. then you’ve got to mount the system, you’ve got to wire it up, you’ve got to connect the inverters to the grid, you’ve got to do all the permitting. It’s a bunch of thorny, unglamorous stupid problems, but if somebody doesn’t optimize them. they’re still going to cost a ton of money. And a lot of them are not fun problems. They’re not exciting problems to optimize, but they are the problem that actually matters in the cost of solar power.”

-SSW Conference, March 9, 2013

This is what the world needs. This is the ultimate solution for Earth. That’s what we’re talking about here. Solar power, stationary storage, electric cars - this is Earth’s solution. We’re going to try to make that happen as fast as possible, and the fundamental good of SolarCity and Tesla will be measured by the degree to which we accelerate the transitions.”

- press teleconference on Tesla acquisition of SolarCity, June 22, 2016It’s a definition that if it’s not renewable, it’s going to run out at some point, “And we will have the choice of the collapse of civilization—and into the Dark Ages we go—or we find something renewable”

-Minutes interview with Liz Hayes.