This post by
@ZeApelido concentrated solar for industrial heat generation, which, as I understand it is one of the more challenging things to decarbonize with a simple electrify-everything approach. Very cool.
For eons we have relied on nature (the sun) to transfer electrons from oxygen to carbon and then let them go back to oxygen by burning "fuel". There are tons of advantages to this as a unit mass of carbon contains lots of energy, is relatively stable, the rate of extraction is easily controlled etc. But the downside is, of course, that in letting the elecrons flow back to the oxygen we are returning oxidized carbon to the atmosphere at a rate potentially higher than the rate at which nature takes it out.
In electrical energy production the energy released by oxidation is used to heat steam which is used to turn a turbine, If we use the energy from the sun to produce the steam directly then we bypass the whole redox process and conversion of solar energy to electricity is much more efficient. Doing this is not really difficult conceptually - you direct sunlight to a boiler and voila. There are some technical difficulties, however, such as collecting the sunlight and focusing it but these difficulties are demonstrably surmountable, with the exception of the rather major ones that the sun doesn't shine at night nor very much during the day when the declination is low (norther hemisphere) and when the sun does shine most is not the time when the system needs the power. The real challenge is not in concentrating the sun nor in setting up PV arrays but to find a way to store the energy produced so that it can be parceled out when needed.
There are, of course, lots of practical matters to be considered related to the capital and operating costs. One can now apparently build an PV array plant for less per kW than a new coal fired plant. Don't know if that same comment would apply to a solar concentration one.
