Concerns about global warming, rising fossil fuel prices, and oil insecurity have prompted calls for a new energy economy, one that replaces fossil fuels with renewables. The sun is an enormous reservoir of energy; in fact, the sunlight reaching Earth in just one hour is enough to power the global economy for a whole year.

3TIER® today announced the completion of its REmapping the World™ initiative, which was launched in March 2008 to address the biggest barrier to global renewable energy adoption – the lack of reliable information regarding resource potential and availability. With today’s release of a global solar map and dataset, the company has completed its unprecedented goal of identifying and mapping the world’s wind and solar resources using a globally consistent methodology.

Written by Jeff Thurston The devel­op­ment and release of 3D GIS is a major step for­ward into the future. It will undoubt­edly cause a stir, sev­eral peo­ple to scratch their heads and unleash a wave of new think­ing that we have not expe­ri­enced in the geo­com­mu­nity for quite some time. It will cross dis­ci­plines, open doors and stir the pot of con­tented indi­vid­u­als who thought we had gone as far as we could go.