Green Technology and Sustainable Development - Research Paper Example

The concentrated solar power integrates the use of mirrors and lenses, for purposes of creating a large surface area of sunlight, into a small beam, therefore converting the energy, into electric energy. This energy is always used in large power plants. The first solar power plant came into existence in the year 1980s. The plant was called Solar Energy Generating Systems, and was in California. This is the largest power installation system in the world (Cummings, 2012). This is because the plant has the capacity of producing 354 megawatts of solar power.

There is no other solar plant in the world that produces solar energy, of such kind of a magnitude. Another solar plant is in the process of construction, and is situated in California. The power plant has the capacity of producing 550 megawatts of solar energy (Tumber, 2012). This is a solar plant that will use photovoltaic energy. Other solar plants, under construction in California are the Topaz solar farm, the Blythe Solar power project, and the Ivanpah solar power facility. All this are photovoltaic solar plants under construction in California.

However, there exist photovoltaic solar panels in America that are in use (Sussman, 2012). These are the Copper Mountain Solar facility, in Nevada, and the Long Island Solar Farm, in New York. The two have a capacity of producing solar energy to the tune of 48 and 37 megawatts of electricity, respectively. This paper focuses on Photovoltaic industry, as an element of solar energy production. The Solar energy industry association estimates the number of jobs created by the industry to stand at around 25000 people.

This amounted to an approximate number of 100,000 people as of August 2011. This people work in the sales and distribution department, installation, project development, finance, and research and development (Hess, 2012). This number of employees amount to less that 1% of United