A jaw-dropping fillup at the gas station and there's no question that we're spiraling into an energy crisis of historic proportions. While our wallets are growing ever thinner, China and India are demanding more oil as they industrialize. America is talking about drilling for oil offshore which will have the effect of helping lower gas prices ten years from now. But can we afford to wait ten years while our monthly energy bills skyrocket out of control?

Today, the developed nations are setting their focus on ethanol as their number one solution to the energy-security-supply problems brought about care of our oil economy. However, corn-based ethanol poses a range of consequences including rising global food prices, increased hunger, and greenhouse gas emissions even greater than the processing of fossil fuels.

Clearly, ethanol is a very untenable, short-term solution. But what other forms of energy should our government promote?

Solar power is a key player in the class of clean renewable sources of energy. It is clean because unlike other renewables such as corn-based ethanol, solar does not emit greenhouse gases. It simply transforms light from the sun into usable energy which proves a highly valuable addition to our energy mix.

Another benefit of this clean renewable is its eco-friendly footprint. While rare, instances of bird deaths in the production of wind energy is one drawback to that important renewable. However, solar energy production does not require large turbine blades spinning high up in the air. It simply collects light from the sun and transforms it into electricity.

But what is the government's role in in the development and production of solar power? Should the government subsidize this clean renewable?

If you want a case study in the effectiveness of government subsidies in the renewable energy sector, look no further than Germany.

On August 1, 2004, Germany's Renewable Energy Sources Act (RESA) entered into force. The purpose of the Act is "to facilitate a sustainable development of energy supply, particularly for the sake of protecting our climate, nature and the environment, to reduce the costs of energy supply to the national economy, also by incorporating long-term external effects, to protect nature and the environment, to contribute to avoiding conflicts over fossil fuels and to promote the further development of technologies for the generation of electricity from renewable energy sources."(1) The Act then

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