Three Simple Checkpoints on the Road to a Clean Energy Future
By Kelly Vaughn in GreenBiz, March 9 2010
The debate about moving to a clean energy economy is over. The question is, how long will it take?
Some, like the recent Wall Street Journal article "The Long Road to an Alternative-Energy Future" by Michael Totty, posit "we shouldn't expect" clean technologies to significantly dent fossil fuel use anytime soon.
But while Rocky Mountain Institute agrees that new energy innovations in solar, wind and electric vehicles may take years to overtake existing products or technologies, there are several ways to make the road a bit shorter.
Totty noted that the sheer size of the energy market is a major reason for the clean energy delay. Yet efficiency measures greatly decrease the total size of the market and help ensure that the contribution of alternatives is more significant.
The challenge of supply cannot be tackled without considering demand-side solutions, and energy efficiency is the critical resource in the portfolio of energy solutions.
