Creating the Pathway As exciting as the future can be with these new technologies, history tells us it takes time to change the energy mix. The road to a new technology is laid one brick at a time. Discontinuities that disrupt the development of self-sustaining businesses and markets can at worst erase prior progress and at best create major delays. The development of a healthy and sustainable renewable energy industry in the US has been, in part, plagued by such discontinuities. We can stop this trend today.
Unused technology is useless technology.
We cannot afford to waste our technological progress by ignoring market realities and policy needs. We must create self-sustaining businesses and markets as an essential ingredient, leading to our desired sustainable economic development energy future. Our international competitors understand these things. Strong industrial competitors like Germany and Japan are implementing environmental policies, taxation and incentives, export assistance, and other actions to create renewable energy businesses and markets at home and in developing countries. Eight European countries now have higher percentage contributions from non-hydro renewables than the US, whereas in 1990 only one country did.