Position papers differ in different ways from informative review papers. What makes the process of creating a position paper different from an informative review paper is that in the position paper as the name suggests you have to take a position and support your position. On the informative review paper as the name also suggest you inform the audience about a certain issue or topic without taking a position directly. While writing this paper it was important for me to keep in mind that I was writing for the ScienceLife Magazine, therefore, my primary audience would be subscribers of the ScienceLife Magazine who are interested in science. Also, my audience are people who are concerned about the negatives effects of coal on the environment and consider solar energy to be the best alternative energy source.

The exigence of my topic was to demonstrate that the United States and the world need to discard coal and fossil fuel as their primary source of energy. My goal was to convince people that solar energy is the best alternative energy source because it creates energy without polluting or harming the environment.

To have a stronger paper I included some counterarguments and concessions. I acknowledge the opposite side of the argument by providing a quote that explains why some people are against solar energy.  After explaining and supporting the opposite side, I then included a piece of evidence demonstrating why the opposite side does not have a strong argument to go against solar energy. The idea that batteries can be paired with solar energy help me demonstrate that not being able to transport the energy gathered from PV cells to other places is not a strong argument of why solar energy would not work. Providing this idea also help me demonstrate why my argument which states that solar energy is the best alternative energy source is stronger.

Ex: “Despite all the benefits that solar energy has to offer to us and our environment solar energy is often seen as inefficient.  Opposers of solar energy have argued that PV technology would not be able to produce the necessary energy to power all the homes and buildings of the United States and the world…“If there were large energy-producing facilities in the deserts, how would the energy be delivered to New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Chicago, thousands of kilometers distant? High-voltage power lines? Through whose neighborhood?”3 Not being able to transport the energy gathered from solar energy camps through the different places where the energy is needed is one of the reasons why solar energy is not seen as an efficient energy source. However, this limitation is not a reason why the government should not change to solar energy because solar energy does not have to work alone to function. Batteries are another type of energy source that can work with solar energy and together help power the US. The energy obtain from the photovoltaic cells can be store in batteries and in that way transport them to any part of the United States and the world.” (paragraph 5 on the paper)

This assignment required at least two scholarly sources, to find those articles I used the City College of New York database. I choose the articles I did because they presented strong data supporting and going against my position, but most importantly they explained what solar energy is and how it works. I also choose the articles I did because each one of them passed my credibility test, which consists of whether the article has an author, does it includes the date of when the article was published, its grammar is professional, etc. I also included an image which explains how PV cells work because I feel that sometimes people understand better when they see how something works rather than reading about it. Lastly, one strategy I use to identify the motivating issue of my sources was that I highlighted all the quotes and main arguments that were included in each article and after it, I only read the highlighted parts of the paper. Using the strategy described above, I was able to determine if the source either supported or opposed solar energy.

The collaborative and social aspects of this writing assignment help me in different ways. First, discussing the type of energy I choose (which is solar energy) with other people pushed me to think outside the box and consider new ideas and strategies that I was not able to think of at first. Also, the questions provided by the professor for the class activities and the lectures help me realize and understand that to have a strong paper I had to study the side I want to support and the side I want to go against equally. In other words, if I wanted to have a strong paper, I had to be well informed of both sides of the argument not just the one I want to support. To complete this assignment I used the academic database named Opposing Viewpoints in Context from the CCNY library database and the different articles provided by the professor through blackboard. The articles provided by the professor help me understand the assignment and the different types of energy sources and that was how I was able to take a position while the database helped me find the articles I need it to support and formulate my argument and paper.

One piece of evidence that supports my claim that “solar energy would not only be beneficial for the environment but also for the economy since it would increase jobs opportunities” states that:

“It is expected that by 2020 there would be over 150,000 Americans employed in the PV industry.” (Hamer, 2006)