If the First Solar Entrepreneur Hadn’t Been Kidnapped, Would Fossil Fuels Have Dominated the 20th Century the Way They Did?
Sugandha Srivastav
The 1909 incident may have cost the industry decades of progress – and the planet huge amounts of damaging carbon emissions.
14 Oct 2023
While researching the economics of clean energy innovation, I came across a little-known story: that of Canadian inventor George Cove, one of the world’s first renewable energy entrepreneurs. Cove invented household solar panels that looked uncannily similar to the ones being installed in homes today – they even had a rudimentary battery to keep power running when the Sun wasn’t shining. Except this wasn’t in the 1970s. Or even the 1950s. This was in 1905.
Then, according to a report in The New York Herald on 19 October 1909, Cove was kidnapped. The condition for his release required forgoing his solar patent and shutting down the company. Cove refused and was later released near Bronx Zoo.
But after this incident, his solar business fizzled out. Which seems odd – in the years before the kidnapping, he had developed several iterations of the solar device, improving it each time.