Lots of deep thinking going on in the media in recent days.
Scientific American’s David Biello asks If the world is going to hell, why are humans doing so well? He looks at research studying the question of humanity’s gains in the face of ecological degradation. The answer: as long as we can feed ourselves through farming we’re not too bothered as a species by global warming, pollution and all the rest — but this won’t last forever and there’s likely to be hell to pay down the line.
Technology Review’s David Rotman explores the question of how we’re going to pay for the costly transition away from fossil fuels in Cash for Infrastructure. Sadly, there’s no answer. Even a major increase in government investment isn’t going to be enough. Meanwhile, the flow of federal dollars is slowing. Although money spent on research and development could lead to breakthroughs, it’s not likely to be enough by itself.
Venture capitalist Rob Day looks at the same issue in his Cleantech Investing blog post All you need is… R&D? He points out that recent calls from people like Bill Gates for government and industry to pour money into energy innovation don’t address the whole problem. Energy markets hold barriers to innovation.
Day says the key is funding deployment:
“There are deep, deep needs for capital elsewhere in cleantech than just in the R&D lab. So-called “first projects”, the first production facilities for a new product, are infamously difficult to finance.
Elsewhere, customers may balk at a 3-year payback period but would gladly take on the cost-saving product if it was offered as a lease (thus saving money from day one), but that requires the vendor to provide the financing. Services — the businesses that would actually be doing the installation of the hoped-for disruptive innovations — remain very difficult to raise capital for.”
Earth2Tech’s Katie Fehrenbacher points out that projections that the global energy storage market will reach $35 billion by 2020 mean that this critical component of the clean energy revolution will be worth in 10 years what Facebook is expected to fetch if it goes public next year.
A common theme running through all these articles — if we don’t pay a lot now will pay even more later.