How do you make fire with ice? Have an answer?

If you haven’t figured it out yet, any good Boy Scout can tell you.

The answer is: carve a piece of ice into the shape of a convex lens. Then use it like a magnifying glass to concentrate the sun’s energy onto tinder, and voila—you have fire.

Resourcefulness is, after all, a Boy Scout character trait.

From probably the beginning of creation people have been dreaming up resourceful ways to harness the power of the sun. The Egyptians supposedly used mirrors to light the inner chambers of the pyramids, and legend has it that Archimedes used polished brass shields to focus sunlight and burn an invading Roman fleet in 212 b.c. Later, in the 15th century, Leonardo Da Vinci designed large-scale solar concentrators to weld copper.

Yet, only recently has large-scale solar power generation really begun to generate interest in America. And it is no wonder: With oil near $118 per barrel, the U.S. spends around $1.5 billion per day importing the fuel. That is money desperately needed elsewhere. The problems associated with foreign oil dependence are real, and efforts to fix them continue to fall short.

But rather than fixate on the oil problem, let’s take a moment to look at a possible real-world solution being offered by the nation of Germany.

Sunlight: What better source of energy could we ask for? After all, solar power technologies take advantage of the most abundant and free fuel God has endowed the Earth with. And that is one fuel America has in copious abundance. Further, one aspect that sets solar energy head and shoulders above so many other energy sources is that it is clean. Unlike oil, coal, natural gas or other biofuels, solar energy comes with almost zero pollution emissions. Once the solar cells and other equipment are manufactured, there is virtually no more pollution for the life of the system.

Imagine a world with no smoke stacks or exhaust pipes that daily spew sulfur and other noxious chemicals into the atmosphere so we can flick on a light bulb and keep the furnace running. And solar power technologies have now even reached the point where they can literally allow the sun to produce light and warmth both day and night.

At the risk of sounding cheesy, maybe it is time that technologies like solar power see the light of day.

Today, the solar power industry is dominated by Germany and to a lesser degree Japan and China. “California at one time led the world in renewable energy development, but we gave up that role two decades ago,” said Paul Gipe, author and sustainable energy expert. “Germany has picked up that banner and is running with it.”

In 2006, Germany produced as much solar energy as the rest of the world combined—and currently produces four times that of the U.S. Of the world’s 20 major photovoltaic plants, 15 were in Germany as of 2006; including the world’s largest in Bavaria. What is even more impressive is that Germany is not a particularly sunshiny place, having fewer sunny days than Portugal.

But to Germany, the investment to harness the sun is worth it to help break its fossil-fuel dependence. Germany also evidently sees massive future potential for solar power, and consequently wants to be on the leading edge of technology.

“We only have a certain amount of available hours of sunshine,” says German Undersecretary for the Ministry of the Environment Matthias Machnik. “For us of course we will use solar power, but it is more important to secure the know-how for research and development.”

German companies have done just that, and now export their clean energy products and know-how around the globe. “We not only want to master the German market, but to conquer the world market as well,” says Carsten Koernig, managing director of the German Solar Industry Association lobbying group.

But that doesn’t mean America can’t take advantage of European technological advances. As you read this article, a Spanish company has plans to build in Nevada what could become the world’s largest solar power plant.

There are two different solar power generation techniques.

The first, photovoltaic solar cells, work by converting light directly into electricity. The semiconductors on the power cells absorb the photons from sunlight and react by giving off a flow of electrons, or electricity. The square solar panels you may have seen on your neighbor’s roof, the emergency phones along some highways, or New York’s new graceful parking meters all contain these solar collecting cells.

The downside to this method is that it generates less electricity when the skies are cloudy and none at night. Yet Germany has found a way around this problem, and it doesn’t require expensive, inefficient batteries either. Excess electricity from the photovoltaic cells during peak production is used to compress air and pump it into vacant underground caverns, abandoned mines, aquifers and depleted natural gas wells. The pressurized air is then released whenever needed, to turn a turbine and generate electricity. Compressed air-storage plants have been operating in Germany since 1978.

This approach could work for the U.S. as well. According to Scientific American, suitable geological formations exist in 75 percent of the country, and the U.S. certainly has an abundance of old oil and natural gas wells that could be used. The natural gas industry already stores 8 trillion cubic feet of gas in pressurized underground reservoirs.

The second type of solar power generation is called concentrated solar power. This approach uses mirrors to reflect the heat energy from a large area onto a small space, such as a pipe filled with fluid, like oil or molten salt. Once the fluid’s temperature has been raised to a sizzling 500 degrees, it is used to turn water to steam and spin conventional generators.

For night-time power generation, Spanish companies are experimenting with giant insulated thermoses that would hold the super-heated fluid throughout the dark hours and continue producing steam.

Currently, this solar generating technique is roughly 30 percent efficient at turning the sun’s heat into electricity. Even at such relatively inefficient production levels, estimates suggest that the newest plants would theoretically only take a 92-by-92-mile-square grid in the Southwest to generate enough electricity to provide for the entire United States.

The potential for solar power to become the premier energy source in America is very real—and exciting. But that’s not to say there is no downside.

Firstly, solar power currently costs several times what conventional power generation does. That means that if Americans want clean, fossil-free power, we will have to pay for it. Because the German government thinks the benefits of solar generation outweigh the costs, it requires that utilities purchase the higher-priced solar power, thus making the German solar industry viable. Some states, such as California, are now following the German model. Thus, given enough time, solar power may become much more widespread in America.

Secondly, environmentalists, while supporting solar power on one hand, decry its use on the other. Solar power plants currently in planning in California are being held up because they are said to threaten endangered desert tortoises’ habitat. Construction is also being held up because new transmission lines that would need to be built could also supposedly interrupt desert wildlife. Additionally, new power lines are ugly. It seems nobody wants those in their backyard, so solar plants are further delayed.

Another downside is that if America wholeheartedly switched to solar, it could cause the demand for other energy sources to plummet. This would leave America paying a high price for its solar energy and leave American competitors, like China and India, with drastically cheaper fossil fuel sources—and give an unfair competitive advantage to foreign industry. Artificially lowered energy prices would also encourage more consumption from the rest of the world, so global pollution levels probably would not fall nearly as much as expected.

Is solar power the be-all and end-all to the world’s energy crisis? Obviously not. Still, God has put man on Earth to tend it and to maintain the creation. Clean power is a step in the right direction.

And that is solar’s biggest advantage. The sun is the biggest, brightest, most intense source of energy in the solar system—and it is clean and free, just waiting to be harnessed. If the world could just capture the amount of sunlight striking the Earth for 40 minutes, it would be enough to power the world for a year. If America could just harvest 2.5 percent of the solar radiation that impacts the 250,000 square miles of suitable solar power land in the country, it would be almost enough to provide energy for every man, woman and child in the U.S. for one year.

All that clean energy is just one type of nonpolluting power.

It is electrifying to ponder what pollution-free power sources the future may hold.

For insights into what the technologically advanced future holds, request your free copy of The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like. For an example of how one country is using geothermal power to free itself of oil dependence, read “The World’s First Oil-Free Economy!”