Getting ReWired – Predicting the New Solar Electric Economy

Predicting the future is a tricky business.  In The Art of Charm podcast Episode 587, Bold in Abundance http://bit.ly/2llvUt2, @PeterDiamandis, the Inventor of the X Prize, describes how in his book Abundance – The Future is Better than You Think, http://amzn.to/2kM1kG7 he predicts that we’re headed for what he calls the Solar Economy.

To support his prediction Peter goes on to say “Solar energy will be so prevalent, so cheap, so available, and decentralized that it will be far more the driver of the world’s economy.”  The Solar Economy future is speeding towards us at an ever accelerating pace, exactly where in the future is that destination?   In the podcast Peter describes the human tendency toward Linear Thinking and why it causes us to miss the mark when coping with technology, innovation, and the advancement of the human race.

In contrast to Linear Thinking, Peter challenges us with the idea of Exponential Thinking in the form of a Moonshot http://bit.ly/2lSA3lh.  “A Moonshot is a radical solution to a large scale global problem using breakthrough technology.  The Moonshot is a term that comes out of Google, Astro Teller who’s the captain of Moonshots who heads Google X, in talking with Larry Paige asked what should Google X should be doing?  It ultimately came out that Google X should be taking Moonshots, it was envisioned as what the Apollo program was, doing something that was daring, big which had a chance of failure.  As they got down to defining it better, what Astro Teller says is that companies are trying to grow incrementally, for most of the world 10% is a great step, 10% more revenue, 10% less cost, 10% more customers.  You can get 10% more growth by working harder, working Fridays and Saturdays, squeezing more out of your employees.  But a Moonshot is where you go for 10X bigger, the difference between 10% and 10X is a hundred fold.  It’s the notion of can you set a crazy objective that everyone in the company says that there’s no way we can grow there linearly and you’re effectively forcing the company to throw away it’s previous methodology of doing things and start with a clean piece of paper.”  I believe that ReWiring our old economy to transform to the New Solar Economy has all the characteristics of a Moonshot.

How do we predict this?  Are these trends towards the Solar Economy already here for us to see?  Is Net Zero becoming the new black or is this part of the evolution of our society away from fossil fuels towards a clean energy future?  These questions are now in the forefront in my mind, solutions to end climate change, ensure  sustainability, clean energy and the end of fossil fuels.

This begins a series of blog posts where I’ll review these top trends through the compelling ideas of current Solar Economic thought leaders like Kevin Kelly, Elon Musk, Jigar Shah, Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis.  join me on this journey, we’ll discover where we are, where we’re going and how we’ll know when we get there.

I’m both concerned and excited about the future, I’m hopeful that technology will step in again and show us a way forward, let’s go help make the world a better place.

Warren N Evans

@solareconomist