Energy Transition Quotes

Destroying an entire energy industry, that hurts the working class.

If you don't have sustainable energy, you have unsustainable energy. The fundamental value of a company like Tesla is the degree to which it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy faster than it would otherwise occur.

Here's what we should be doing. We've got to get off fossil fuels.

There is a connection between energy, climate, food and political stability. That has played out in the Arab awakening and is not done playing out.

I think the future for solar energy is bright.

Energy independence and energy security are really two different things.

The primary means of energy generation is going to solar. It will at least be a plurality, and probably be a slight majority in the long term.

The goal of Tesla is to accelerate sustainable energy, so we're going to take a step back and think about what's most likely to achieve that goal.

We're going to need that kind of movement, because the fossil fuel industry is a sprawling adversary - at work everywhere, its tentacles in everybody's politics, invulnerable, I think, to direct frontal assault, but probably more brittle than it guesses if we come at it from all sides.

There's not going to be any one replacement for oil: we need to have hundreds of solutions to this global issue.

Japan is a model already to the lie that economic growth is the key to our future. If they can really show an alternative to nukes and fossil fuels, then they will be the poster boy for the renewable energy for the future.

The energy transition demands a clear vision of the steps that need to be taken and a stable, meaningful regulatory framework. It appears important to us to awaken public opinion to the fact that this transition will necessarily come at a cost and will, at least in the short term, involve a price increase.

Only when the oil and gas industry has taken full account of, and responsibility for, the impacts of exploring for and extracting fossil fuels can we engage in a serious and worthy evaluation of whether fracking can indeed provide a bridge to a sustainable energy future.

We can, and must, shift to an economy in which 100% of our electricity is generated renewably.

Even if we didn't have greenhouse gases, were going to have to move away from fossil fuels, as we're going to run out. They're finite, whereas solar and wind are infinite.

I basically don't think that the way we do things is that dependent on one resource, such as oil. There can be different kinds of engines for cars. I think that solar heating, wind heating can substitute for a lot of uses for oil. I'd like to see those things happen because they are more sustainable in any case. But I do not think that running out of oil is not going to bother us that much. I think we have got to be rescued by something or we really are going down a slippery slope.

As both developed and developing nations search for alternative sources of energy in response to the growing energy crisis, we at Acumen Fund believe that investing in entrepreneurs who provide innovative energy solutions is an increasingly critical part of the solution.

Burning fossil fuels has given us the gift of seeing ourselves in new ways. But that very gift now enables us to see we've got to change our ways.

Today's wars are about oil. But alternate energies exist now - solar, wind - for every important energy-using activity in our lives. The only human work that cannot be done without oil is war.

Just as the stone age did not end for lack of stones, the oil age will not end because of a scarcity of oil.

The potential of renewable energy is immense.

We need to diversify our economy, but I also think we still have a future in coal.

It may be a hundred-year battle to turn around our industries and finally get everyone living on sustainable energy with technology that can keep our lives comfortable. If that's the case, the first 20 years of the shift have actually done a lot to support that. But there's still a long way to go, and judging by the state of the environment, we don't have that kind of time.

Since stepping down as laboratory director in 1999, I have devoted an increasing fraction of my time to international issues. I am involved with energy, environment, and sustainability issues, particularly as they involve new energy sources free of greenhouse gases.

The idea that we are going to be able to take our entire society as it currently works and simply change the source of energy and make it sustainable is not actually congruent with reality.