many of them and could meet the requirements of the prevalent village communities. As industrial countries are developing solar technologies to meet their needs, they consider developing countries as potential markets for these technologies. Industrial and governmental organizations are deciding what would be best for the developing countries, and on what terms the technology should be made available with, at times, insufficient regard for the requirements of the recipients. Although the sharing of knowledge and transfer of technology has to be accomplished to assist developing countries with technology development, mere transfer of technology would not permit such countries to make real progress without an indigenous capacity for technological innovation. To condemn developing countries to being the mere passive recipients of knowledge acquired elsewhere or to decide a priori that only “soft” technologies are appropriate is to perpetuate dependence and to consolidate the division of the world into different groups of countries, some of which, having the exclusive privilege of high-level knowledge can be “trusted” with “hard” technol- gies. The use of technology in the developing countries will depend on their desire to adapt those technologies which best fit their needs and to develop unique solutions to meet these needs. Different solutions may be appropriate at various stages of society's development. Should “hard” technologies be required, then no society should be excluded from applying the most appropriate technology to serve its needs. Preconceptions regarding the most appropriate technologies, whether used in a developing or industrial country, may compromise the development of the most effective technologies. Solar water heaters, which represent one of the solar technologies ready to be commercialized in this country, will have to compete, for example, with heat pump water heaters or other technologies which will best meet the criteria of society and the marketplace. The impacts of “soft” technologies such as distributed solar energy applications will have to be compared with the impacts of “hard” technologies on materials, energy, labor, capital, and the environment. For example, the production of photovoltaic systems to generate electrical power in the gigawatt range, which may be achievable by the year 2000, will require manufacturing facilities capable of producing solar cell arrays at a rate of several thousand square meters per hour. This implies the creation of a new industrial capability and associated infrastructure of a size not unlike the automobile tire industry to meet potential market requirements for photovoltaic systems, whether used for distributed or centralized applications. Underlying the development of both “soft” and “hard” technologies are energy conservation strategies which require that the specific form of energy be thermodynamically most appropriate to the end uses: for example, solar energy for low- grade industrial process heat rather than fossil fuels. But where electricity is most appropriate for an end-use application, the most effective technology should be utilized, which may involve either distributed or centralized methods of energy conversion to electricity, or their combination (e.g., rooftop installation of photovoltaic arrays integrated with a utility system). TOWARDS A GLOBAL CIVILIZATION The time horizon for the development of both “soft” and “hard” technologies, which conceivably could play an important role to meeting future global energy
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