Question: Nowadays, everyone talks about it: climate change, and more importantly, how to stop it from happening. Although there's a lot of debate around the topic, the consensus is that by inventing a way of generating clean energy, we can slow down (and maybe even reverse) the effects global warming has on the planet. Using energy that was created without burning millions of years worth of stored carbon, we can not only power our everyday lives, but also capture the carbon we've been blowing into our atmosphere using the energy-intensive process of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

But there are still some problems. Currently, photovoltaic cells are pretty much useless during winter when it comes to fueling the homes of millions (at least where I live). We want to warm our homes, but there's not enough clean energy during those months, so we fall back on nuclear.

**Wouldn't it therefore be better to have a small rise in global temperature?**

* A higher temperature means you don't have to warm your home during winter (as much).
* During summer, you can use the extra energy generated by the photovoltaic cells to power air conditioners in order to cool buildings and
* Use some excess energy to stop the [runaway greenhouse effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect) using CCS.

Even though cooling requires more energy than heating, might it break even? **Will the rise in temperature have a positive effect on our energy production and the ability to satisfy energy demand?**

Answer: 
> 
> Wouldn't it therefore be better to have a small rise in global temperature?
> 

**No.** The radiative forcing by carbon dioxide does not increase solar radiation that can be captured by solar cells. The warmer temperatures actually **decrease** solar cell output, because solar cells really like cold temperatures and lots of radiation. You can't have both optimal temperature and optimal radiation at the same time, because solar radiation causes the temperature to increase.

If we could somehow manage radiative forcing, to reduce worldwide temperatures, we could make more power with solar cells.

**Edit:** Nice to have unexplained downvotes after an upvote. So, let me add some sources:

* <https://www.civicsolar.com/article/how-does-heat-affect-solar-panel-efficiencies>
* <https://greentumble.com/effect-of-temperature-on-solar-panel-efficiency/>
* <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610213000829>
* and many, many other (I'm not going to link to all sources I could link to because the list of sources would be very long)
The US isn't the only land mass in the world you know. In much of Africa people and animals are dying in the heat. And on a global scale the man made energy requirements are rising exponentially because of global warming. In Britain for instance people are busy installing air conditioning which they never needed before. If you even looked at the extra air conditioning installed in the US you would probably find it outweighs all this estimated saving. Scientists are also working on superconductors which save quite a bit of energy, but necessitate very cold temperatures which will become increasingly difficult to maintain.