[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]
You also mentioned Germany. What are some of the successes there, and what are the challenges?
Philp: There are challenges to being a first mover, but there are also benefits. Until 2004 or 2005, Germany was the largest producer of solar photovoltaic panels in the world. They’ve lost that advantage to China, but it shows the benefits you can reap if you get ahead.
Lester: Certainly, some countries have moved relatively fast to bring renewables in, but they’re running up against some pretty significant constraints. There is a limit on the extent to which you can cross-subsidize the introduction of renewables. But I think one of the reasons one can be optimistic about this problem is if you look not at the national level, but at the level of regions or states or municipalities. I’ll use my own state of Massachusetts as an example: We’ve seen quite a rapid development of the renewables industry, including solar. Through steady policies at the state level, we’ve had a reasonably rapid take-up of low-carbon technologies. And we have a clean-energy industry that’s now employing almost 100,000 people.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
How do you break down some of the barriers resulting from necessary regulation which are hindering us from growing things out as quickly as we may need to?
Philp: It’s about creating a trade-off, first of all, between having a secure, reliable electricity supply and innovating as much as we need to. Now, you wouldn’t think that vertically integrated utilities — that have the generation, the transmission and the distribution — would be incentivized to be particularly innovative, but some of the big vertically integrated utilities, Hydro-Québec being one of them, are some of the most innovative. So I think that’s one of the big challenges: to figure out how we have a stable grid but make sure we’re innovating. The second one is, what are the benefits that will come from innovations that are not just domestic? What benefits are we forgoing in terms of international market opportunities or revenue generated overseas if we choose not to innovate? That’s something that’s often lost in the discussion, and it’s something we try to focus on.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][mk_image src=”https://energy-exchange.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Photovoltaic_capacity.png” image_height=”776″ lightbox=”true” frame_style=”single_line” crop=”false”][mk_image src=”https://energy-exchange.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/10B2.png” image_height=”651″ frame_style=”single_line” caption_location=”outside-image” crop=”false”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][mk_blockquote font_family=”none” align=”left”]I don’t think you ever lose out by investing in fundamental research, but without commercialization, it will languish.
— Ian Philp[/mk_blockquote][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]
Look ahead 10 years. What does our energy system look like?
Philp: I think we will see a system that is more decentralized, that has more nodes of sustainability, so people are actually producing, generating and consuming energy all within a radius of where they live and work, and where people have a little more context and sensibility about what energy they are producing and using, and how they can save — because I think costs will inevitably go up.
Wicklum: I’m a great believer in the innovative capacity of people. Whenever humans have set their minds to a defined challenge, they’re pretty good at finding solutions. I think Canadian energy extraction and production will keep getting more efficient with less of an environmental footprint. I can tell you there’s lots of investment going on in many different parts of the world, and I think the system is going to keep getting better and better.
Lester: It’s probably not going to look a lot different from today, because lead times are long. We might hope to see the acceleration of energy efficiency. In the U.S., our energy intensity has been declining by about 2 per cent per year. That has to increase. A lot of the gains are likely to happen through residential and commercial buildings. We’re just at the very front end of a whole array of networked improvements in energy use of appliances, hot water, heating and cooling. The challenge for innovators is to make this happen in the background, where innovators can be paid for innovations and earn an acceptable return, but where it doesn’t require conscious decision-making by consumers. [mk_font_icons icon=”icon-stop” size=”small” padding_horizental=”4″ padding_vertical=”4″ circle=”false” align=”none”][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][mk_image src=”https://energy-exchange.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Quebec2.png” image_height=”651″ frame_style=”single_line” caption_location=”outside-image” crop=”false”][mk_image src=”https://energy-exchange.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/40percent2.png” image_height=”651″ frame_style=”single_line” caption_location=”outside-image” crop=”false”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][mk_button size=”large” icon=”moon-reading” url=”/resources/energy-exchange-magazine/issue-3/” fullwidth=”true” animation=”fade-in” bg_color=”#13bdd2″]Read more stories from the Winter 2015 issue of Energy Exchange magazine[/mk_button][/vc_column][/vc_row]