Everyone needs to help each other build the clean energy future we need today, according to the World Energy Council’s latest report. That means investing, and legislating, around a few inconvenient environmental and political truths. Plus, it’s not like we don’t have the money.
“Our report finds that capital is available in the private sector to the required scale, but investors and developers will have to invest way beyond their comfort zones, and they will need better help from governments, regulators, and international financial institutions than is currently envisaged,” executive chair of WEC’s 2014 World Energy Trilemma study.
WEC’s “Trilemma” is the volatile costs of doing energy security, energy access and environmental sustainability business as usual. Earthlings will need to shell out more than $2.5 trillion a year to meet energy expectations by 2035, the WEC argues, and today’s $1.7 trillion a year just isn’t cutting it for most of us.
Nations like Switzerland, Sweden and Norway rank atop its criteria for countries able to walk the “Trilemma” tightrope. The United States wheezes in at a middling twelfth, even though it boasts the most equitable energy system in the world. Switzerland leads everyone thanks to to its environmental sustainability. Its example will come in handy when the swelling world population needs to pay upwards of $250 per capita to keep the lights on in 2035. Of course, the WEC’s numbers fluctuate like global warming superstorms, but its security-minded “Trilemma” report still paints a pretty clear conclusion: Money talks.
“Policymakers and regulators must clearly signal their future energy strategies, recognising the need for appropriate risk-reward structures, and to put in place lasting policy and regulatory frameworks, free from populist political interference,” it demands. “Alongside this, it is increasingly clear that there needs to be a focus on the development of technical, financial and management skill sets to support energy projects around the world and enable the energy sector to absorb capital.”
To get that, the WEC argues, policymakers must steer clear of biases toward conventional energy sources and invest more in “clearly bankable” decarbonization projects that are well-organized and ready to roll. Of course, the solar industry comes immediately to mind as the type of “thriving energy market” with a competitive reward-risk framework that the WEC is looking for.
As an obvious alternative to the billions the WEC maintains the fossil fuel industry will still demand as renewable energy generation goes mainstream in the next couple of decades, solar solves the “Trilemma” better than any other energy source, conventional or otherwise. So if you’re an investor, or homeowner, looking for an effectively managed, reliable energy supply and infrastructure that is both affordable and accessible across the general population, while also being the planet’s most environmentally sustainable option, then the sun is shining in your blinking eyes.
This article appeared in SOLARENERGY]