Getting the prices right is critical to advancement of all forms of clean energy. This requires legislative action to assure that all energy resources bear the full externality costs of their impact on society, including the mortality, health and environmental damage they impose and national security costs that are not reflected in their prices. Externalities can be dealt with by taxes or by regulations that limit harmful emissions from polluting resources. Where energy resources are regulated by government, it is important that intermittent resources like solar energy not be disadvantaged. Market transformation measures such as energy efficiency standards for appliances, lights and motors, and miles per gallon standards for vehicles, can be an effective legal mechanism for reducing pollution and encouraging the substitution of clean for dirty energy resources.
Citizen suits are a very effective enforcement modality.
It is concluded that clean energy resources can be introduced and dirty resources discouraged by any country affordably and that no country can afford to fail to do so. And no bigger undertaking has ever been attempted by the international community than to devise effective means of implementing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit to address these threats. The burning of fossil fuels is the most significant source of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. The principal problem with substitution of clean energy for fossil fuels is that the present use of them is so central to the world's economies, fueling their electric utilities, industry, vehicles, heating and cooling of buildings, and often their household cooking. Developing countries have focussed on their economic development and the feeding, clothing, housing and health facilities for their populations, often regarding environmental improvements and clean energy as at best secondary priorities.