Crossing the Divide: The Future of Clean Energy

Increasing public concerns about climate change, and its potential economic and political security consequences, are helping to drive public policy change and private investment to bring clean energy technologies to the center of the world's energy activities as quickly as possible, a new analysis by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) has concluded.

The result of this rising public and private momentum is an increase in worldwide clean energy investment that could surpass $7 trillion by 2030 in cumulative real 2007 dollars, according to the CERA report Crossing the Divide: The Future of Clean Energy.

“We are seeing a major shift in public opinion, reinforced by the expectation that carbon policies could fundamentally change the competitive landscape of the global energy business,” said Daniel Yergin, CERA's chairman. “This is providing a vital impetus that is moving clean technology across the great divide of cost, proven results, scale and maturity that has separated it from markets served by mainstream technologies and processes.”

CERA’s analysis used a scenarios framework in order to assess the winners and losers among various clean energy technologies and help define key risk and opportunity areas as companies look to place their technology bets. The analysis addressed both new and conventional energy technologies that are capable of providing energy with a minimal carbon footprint and facilitate greater energy security. These technologies include biofuels, solar, wind, ocean, geothermal and hydropower technologies. While CERA’s scenarios provide widely different outcomes, advances occur in at least some clean energy technologies across all three scenarios.

For more information and an overview of the report visit Cambridge Research Associates online.