This heightened need for foresight motivates the Roadmap Initiative. The first year of the Roadmap's development is synthesized in this report. It is supplemented by topical area reports on electricity supply, electricity delivery, electricity and economic growth, the environment, and global sustainable development. Electricity-based innovation is central to productivity growth. The precision and flexibility of electricity has powered the industrialized world from the era of smokestacks into the era of knowledge-based services shaping the 21st century.
Electricity enables the global real-time network for communication, finance, and trade.
This network is becoming not only the backbone of the knowledge-based global economy, but also a highway for developing nations to accelerate their way out of poverty. Technology innovation has emerged as the primary driver for economic growth. Accelerated productivity growth is essential to resolving the widening pension and health-care deficits of an aging population. The alternative is a spiraling economic burden for a shrinking work force. Electricity is expected to play a profound role in helping society seize the opportunities and manage the threats emerging in the new century.