This Is How We Will Live in 2029 - OnEarth Magazine, from NRDC, Spring 2009

This Is How We Will Live in 2029 - OnEarth Magazine, from NRDC, Spring 2009:

"With this issue, OnEarth is launching an occasional series that will examine what our world will look like in, say, the year 2029. And we begin with our cover story, 'Selling the Sun,' by Michael Behar. The topic of solar energy may seem a bit ho-hum. If solar is so great, so promising - as we've been told all these years - why hasn't it really caught on? Why aren't there solar panels on every roof in America? The sun is free, right?

Behar found some intriguing answers lodged inside the brain of Jigar Shah. Shah is not a scientist. He's a businessman, an entrepreneur - and a visionary. He understood that a fundamental obstacle to the widespread adoption of solar energy was not primarily technological (although there are still significant hurdles here), but economic. The key is to remove the financial roadblocks: his customers don't have to buy expensive equipment that can take years to budget and pay off, that require endless hassles to obtain and maintain. No, the company he founded, SunEdison, takes care of all that. His customers simply sign on the dotted line, stand back as panels are installed, and then pay their (solar) electric bills like every other Tom, Dick, or Harriet. Suddenly, solar becomes affordable - and competitive with conventional forms of energy. This groundbreaking business model, along with falling prices for raw materials and, inevitably, federal limits on fossil-fuel carbon emissions, convinces Shah and others that we are finally seeing the true beginning of the solar era."