If you haven’t yet noticed, due to the rising cost of electricity cooling your home in the summer has gotten so expensive that people depend on fans and accept profusely sweating in order to keep the cost of utilities down. Foreign governments have realized the growing cost of energy and have long been providing incentives to individuals and organizations that utilize renewable technologies, but this is still a fairly new practice in the United States.

If it’s not even being widely-used in the United States compared to foreign countries, then why should you care about solar energy?

First of all, the source of the energy is renewable and limitless. It produces energy through nuclear fusion, in which hydrogen fuses into helium. As long as we have the sun, we will always have solar energy. The Earth receives approximately 400 trillion watts of power every day, which is more than enough energy for the entire world (like 8,000 times over!). The sun emits enough energy to the Earth in one hour to power the world for an entire year.

People are declaring war over control of oil production and supply and the situation isn’t getting any better. We need a source of energy that is universally available to prevent global conflict over a single energy source. Solar energy is universally abundantly available, and will become even more so with new technologies to more efficiently harness solar energy.

The more research that we do, the more we find how to harness it at the least cost, but research also takes money and support. This is why believing in solar energy is so important: the more people behind an issue, the more attention I get and; therefore, the more funding it receives.

Focus on solar energy can save the environment. The burning of fossil fuels is a contributor to our climate crisis. The effects of this include higher sea levels, extreme weather, destruction of coral reefs, less oxygen for marine life and drastic blows to the food chain.

Finally, there’s one benefit to solar energy that everyone should care about: money. The federal government gives a tax break to citizens who install solar panels in their homes. Between the rebates and the lower cost of installation of solar panels, industry figures indicate that solar power users saved approximately $80 per month on their energy.

Solar energy isn’t necessarily the sole solution to our energy problem – it’s not without its faults, but it’s an energy source that you should certainly care about. More education for lawmakers on new technologies to make harnessing solar energy more efficient is certainly necessary though if the United States is going to catch up to other countries in utilizing solar energy.