The Global article tells us that Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum see themselves as energy companies and are pouring millions of dollars into solar manufacturing facilities. On the surface, movement into renewable energy is commendable. However, it appears to be a delaying action to protect their investment in fossil fuels. In 1994 the photovoltaic component of our energy consumption was too small to be even listed. The only new energy sources that have the potential to meet the world's energy needs are cold fusion and zero-point energy.
Nuclear energy is both expensive and politically unacceptable.
Zero-point energy is about 10 years behind cold fusion in its development but is inherently less expensive and capable of being scaled up rapidly. It not only is capable of electric power production but will be used in all the fossil fuel markets, except chemicals. It will be possible to completely saturate the energy market by 2020 and at least one organization has plans to do just that. Funding Potential Global lists nine economic sectors in terms of profit. The collection of zero-point energy and conversion into electric power or other fossil fuel applications is a high technology activity and will justify a high technology rate of return on investment or a 50 percent gross profit, for example.