With all of the recent attention on soaring energy costs, many Americans have felt and expressed frustration with our government's failure to find better solutions. Our politicians have definitely felt the heat, and realized they'd better start addressing the issue.

Individual states have already taken many measures to encourage residents to pursue alternative energy sources, but not all are up to speed yet. However, under President Bush's Solar America Initiative, some progress is beginning to be made. Just recently, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced plans to contract with seven companies and six universities to work on the development of less expensive storage of solar energy. Concentrating solar power (CSP), as this essentially is, is the practice of collecting the sun's energy and concentrating it to produce usable power.

One of the major drawbacks and hindrances to incorporating more solar energy into our country's infrastructure is the expensive cost of storing the energy produced for an extended period of time. Through this program, which is funded by Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), the DOE hopes to reduce the cost of CSP. Currently, CSP electricity has no ability to be stored, and costs $0.13-$0.16/kWh per day to produce. By the time this program has reached maturity in 2020, the goal is to have production be less than $0.07, with the ability to store the electricity generated for 12-17 hours.

In total, 15 projects will be developed under this plan. This is definitely a step in the right direction for the future of solar energy. There are already a number of these CSP farms throughout our country. They work by collecting large amounts of sunlight through mirrors, which transfer the sunlight to receivers that then convert the sunlight into heat. The heat is converted into usable electricity. This electricity is used to supplement the major utilities.

The long-term hope and purpose of these programs is not only making solar power a more feasible energy option, but to help to further our country's energy independence from foreign sources.

The sun is an abundant and never-ending energy resource; we as a nation and as a world need only to perfect our methods of harvesting and capitalizing on its flowing energy. Even though fuel prices are beginning to drop, the recent price hike must not be quickly forgotten. In the midst of the rising prices, practically everyone was focused on conservation, alternative means of transportation, and more efficient cars. Our nature is to settle back into our comfort zone when everything goes back to normal. Let us not forget where we were headed, and definitely not let our lawmakers off the hook until we reach a new crisis in the future because of current neglect.