Continued realization of these opportunities, however, will be paced by the ability of the electricity delivery system to both meet the increasingly diversified requirements of a competitive marketplace, and maintain power reliability and power quality as transactional volume and open-access complexity increase. The current power delivery grid was not designed to meet these emerging demands. Proper incentives, including elimination of institutional uncertainties, are urgently needed to ensure timely and sufficient investment in the development and deployment of these innovations. The evolution of ever smaller and lower-cost distributed generation technology is creating commercial alternatives to centralized power generation and its delivery grid for meeting the escalating marketplace demands in energy services and quality. Robust electricity-based technological innovation is an essential basis for this solution pathway.
Electrification is an essential vehicle for productivity improvement and sustainable development.
In particular, it can help developing nations leapfrog over the earlier and relatively inefficient development pathways followed by today's more affluent industrialized nations in order to enjoy an improved quality of life with much higher resource efficiency. Moreover, a universal foundation of at least 1000 kWh per capita per year will be needed to achieve acceptable levels of literacy, health, and security, and to enable sustainable global economic growth. Global greenhouse warming is the contingent risk on which the global energy future hinges. Fundamental research into the science and economics of this risk must be accelerated to provide the necessary guiding knowledge. This climate change concern is a long-term issue requiring a truly sustainable solution.