[copious.abundance]

CA, if QE doesn't boost GDP figures - Why does BOJ and fed bother?

This guy here provides an interesting (and technical) take, at least for the US case.

But first, let me point out once again that the real purpose of QE was not to print money or stimulate growth. It was to "transmogrify" notes and bonds into T-bill substitutes (aka bank reserves). QE boils down to the Fed simply swapping bank reserves for notes and bonds. Banks have been happy to hold most of the extra reserves as "excess" reserves, which means that they didn't use their reserves to collateralize a huge increase in lending. There was a huge demand for reserves qua reserves, and QE simply satisfied that demand. Without QE there would have been a critical shortage of safe, risk-free assets, and that would have threatened financial stability.

This time around, it looks like the demand for safe assets like bank reserves has declined and there's more financial stability, which means there is no longer a need for QE.

Don't know about the Japanese case. Maybe the BOJ is thinking, well, it worked in the US so maybe it can work here too. Or maybe they're trying to devalue the yen to boost exports, since domestic demand growth has little chance of doing anything for the foreseeable (and longer) future. No domestic demand? Boost exports! Problem with that is, by cheapening your currency you're going to make imports expensive (Japan has no choice but to import certain things), which is going to reduce domestic spending power at least some, which will make already tepid domestic demand even more tepid. And that, in turn, risks nullifying the boost in exports due to the cheapened yen. So basically it's a very risky bet for them, and personally I'd be surprised if it worked.

[Graeme]

The Future Growth of Solar Energy Will Shock You

The energy industry hasn't been disrupted in a meaningful way since oil replaced coal as the main transportation fuel over a century ago. Today, solar energy is on the cusp of upending everything we know about energy, making it possible for households to produce energy, making unproductive desert land into highly productive generating assets, and upending the utility electricity model that's been in place since the days of Thomas Edison.

Just how big can the solar industry be? The opportunity can literally be measured in trillions of dollars.

The next great investing opportunity

Today, the solar industry is a $120 billion industry, which sounds big but that's a figure that needs a lot of context. The world spends $2 trillion every year on electricity and $2.7 trillion on oil at $80 per barrel. Energy is a huge potential market if solar can disrupt it.

What's incredible is that industry analysts are expecting the solar industry to grow 10x over the next 20 years as solar energy competes with conventional electricity on price. That's probably conservative given the exponential growth we could see if demand for solar energy picks up.

I recently talked to SunPower's (NASDAQ: SPWR ) CEO Tom Werner and he put the industry's potential into some context.

This is just a piece of a larger interview, which can be seen here.

Growth could be faster than anyone thinks

While growing 10x sounds impressive, I think that's short changing the solar industry's potential. Remember, enough solar energy hits the earth every hour to power every electrical device, every car, everything that takes energy for an entire year. If companies can cost effectively harness that energy the potential is there for exponential growth.

Consider that the U.S. alone can generate over 1,000 million kilowatts of electricity at summer peak capacity. That would be 1,000 GW of solar capacity in the U.S. alone and that's just peak at power. Solar energy is only 20% to 30% efficient because the sun is only up on average for half of the day, so much more capacity would be needed to power the whole country.

Since the solar industry in the U.S. is only 6.5 GW this year to reach 1,000 GW of installed capacity the industry would have to grow 20% per year for 19 years. That's much faster than the 12% it would take to grow 10x in 20 years. And that's just the U.S.

The point is that growth in solar industry growth could easily exceed 20% for the next decade and the companies who can gain market share could become some of the largest energy companies in the world. If you're not participating in the solar energy revolution, now may be the time to start looking into it.

fool

[Graeme]

US Sees Second-Largest Solar Installation Growth In Q3

The United States installed 1,354 MW of solar PV in the third quarter of 2014, up 41% over the same period a year earlier, and the making it the second-largest quarter of all time for the US solar industry, bringing the country’s cumulative solar PV capacity up to 16.1 GW.

These numbers come courtesy of GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association in the latest US Solar Market Insight Report, released today. The report also found that, through the first three quarters of 2014, solar PV represented 36% of new capacity to come online, an increase of 29% in 2013 and 9.6% in 2012.

cleantechnica

A New Report Says Distributed Generation Like Solar Will Double Globally By 2023

A new report by Navigant Research projects that distributed generation will roughly double in the next nine years.

Distributed generation (DG) is the decentralized production of electricity by small-scale systems — most often in the form of rooftop solar, but it can include biomass, wind, and other forms of renewable power as well. Navigant Research’s analysis also included natural gas and diesel generators of 6 megawatts or less, along with solar arrays of one megawatt or less and small wind turbines of 500 kilowatts or less.

According to their forecast (unfortunately behind a paywall) the total capacity for DG installed around the world will grow from 87.3 gigawatts in 2014 to 165.5 gigawatts in 2023. Most of the growth is anticipated to come from the deployment of solar. Geographically, the biggest increase in the projection was in Western Europe, with North America and the Asian Pacific not too far behind.

thinkprogress

Great Progress on Smart Grid and Smart City Predictions for 2020

How much can change in a year? When it comes to Smart Grid and Smart City topics, the answer is quite simply – a lot can change. Here’s progress report on my ten predictions about Smart Grid and Smart Cities activity by 2020. The first five are featured this week. You can review the complete predictions here and here, and judge for yourself the quality of my crystal ball.

California hits and exceeds its RPS objective of 33% renewable sources of electricity by 2020 – the most ambitious of all states with this calendar deadline. As of October 2014, the state’s three investor-owned utilities (IOUs) obtained 22.7% of their electricity from renewables, and are on track to meet the 2016 25% milestone. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) projects that solar alone will contribute 42% of the state’s total renewables generation. The state has about 245,000 rooftop solar PV installed now, and by 2017 the aggregated generation from these systems will approach 3,000 MW.

theenergycollective

Grains of Rice, Japanese Swords, and Solar Panels

Even Greenpeace has underestimated the growth of renewables. In particular, solar has been growing exponentially, and may continue to be so for a while, though likely at a slower percentage rate.

Greenpeace did much better than many at projecting the growth of renewable energy sources in the 2000s. Their projections were very close to outturn for wind – the 1999 projections were a little below outturn, the 2002 projections a little above. However even Greenpeace underestimated the growth of solar. The projections were nevertheless startlingly better than those of the IEA, who have, as I’ve previously noted, consistently underestimated the growth of renewables by a huge margin. Growth of solar has been exponential, as has that of wind (at least until recently). Greenpeace appears to have done well by following the logic of exponential growth.

Greenpeace’s projections for wind growth in the 2000s were close to outturn, but they underestimated the growth of solar …

In short there seem few barriers to solar continuing to grow exponentially for a while, although likely at a slower percentage rate than in the past – each doubling is likely to take longer than two years given the current scale of the industry. Solar can still continue moving quite a long way up the chessboard before it hits its limits. How large the industry will become will need to await a future post, but provisionally there does not seem any reason why solar PV should not become a 300-600 GW p.a. or more industry.

theenergycollective

[MonteQuest]

Translation: I have no rebuttal to C.A's data and give up.

Give up? Me? Never. The coup de grace is yet to come.

[MonteQuest]

CA, if QE doesn't boost GDP figures - Why does BOJ and fed bother?

It is really hard to tell, even for the experts, if QE has worked or not since what would have happened in the absence of it cannot be measured. Suffice to say that those toxic assets rose in value and the yield fell due to increased demand. Not to mention, fretful holders of those toxic assets suddenly found them liquid. They could relax and buy other less risky investments, as those "troubled assets" were now on the FED's balance sheet, not theirs. QE has supported the bull-run in stocks we have enjoyed since early 2009 and long-term interest rates dropped helping housing.

Much of the FED's actions are encouragement to borrow and invest. How many cautious investors have jumped back into the markets and funded capital investments?

As for BOJ, Japanese GDP growth was solid, just not sufficient to pull inflation out of negative territory.

[Graeme]

How Solar Power Could Slay the Fossil Fuel Empire by 2030

In just 15 years, the world as we know it will have transformed forever. The ​age of oil, gas, coal and nuclear will be over. A new age of clean power and smarter cars will fundamentally, totally, and permanently disrupt the existing fossil fuel-dependent industrial infrastructure in a way that even the most starry-eyed proponents of ‘green energy’ could never have imagined.

These are not the airy-fairy hopes of a tree-hugging hippy living off the land in an eco-commune. It’s the startling verdict of ​Tony Seba, a lecturer in business entrepreneurship, disruption and clean energy at Stanford University and a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

Seba began his career at Cisco Systems in 1993, where he predicted the internet-fueled mobile revolution at a time when most telecoms experts were warning of the impossibility of building an Internet the size of the US, let alone the world. Now he is predicting the “inevitable” disruption of the fossil fuel infrastructure.

Seba’s thesis, set out in more detail in his new book Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation, is that by 2030 “the industrial age of energy and transportation will be over,” swept away by “exponentially improving technologies such as solar, electric vehicles, and self-driving cars.”


Two days after his JP Morgan lecture, Seba was addressing the 2014 Global Leaders’ Forum in south Korea, sponsored by Korean government ministries for science and technology, where he elaborated on the prospects of an energy revolution. Within just 15 years, he said, solar and wind power will provide 100 percent of energy in competitive markets, with no need for government subsidies.

Over the last year Seba has even been invited to share his vision with oil and gas executives in the US and Europe. “Essentially, I’m telling them you’re out of business in less than 15 years,” Seba said.
Revolutionary economics of renewables

For Seba, there is a simple reason that the economics of solar and wind are superior to the extractive industries. Extraction economics is about decreasing returns. As reserves deplete and production shifts to more expensive unconventional sources, costs of extraction rise. Oil prices may have dropped dramatically due to the OPEC supply glut, but costs of production remain high. Since 2000, the oil industry's investments have risen threefold by 180 percent, translating into a global oil supply increase of just 14 percent.

In contrast, the clean disruption is about increasing returns and decreasing costs. Seba, who dismisses biomass, biofuels and hydro-electric as uneconomical, points out that with every doubling of solar infrastructure, the production costs of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels fall by 22 percent. “The higher the demand for solar PV, the lower the cost of solar for everyone, everywhere,” said Seba. “All this enables more growth in the solar marketplace, which, because of the solar learning curve, further pushes down costs.”

motherboard

Optimism Is in the Wind: The Wind Energy Generation Industry is Growing Stronger by the Year

The Production Tax Credit (PTC) is needed to keep wind energy nationally competitive, said Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and the keynote speaker at this year’s Financial Forum Luncheon at Power Generation Week.

Despite this assertion, Kiernan remains bullish on the national market for wind-generated energy, noting that two states in the country, Iowa and South Dakota, currently generate over 25 percent of their energy via wind, with nine states currently generating 10 percent or more of their energy using wind.
Kiernan also said that wind energy is cheaper than many other conventional energy sources. Referencing a bill stub that Xcel Energy recently mailed to its customers announcing a 30 percent increase in the utility’s wind generation capacity, Kiernan emphasized that the company would pass the cost savings on to the customer. “That’s right,” he said, “Wind energy is not only good for the environment, it can also be the most economical energy choice.”

Kiernan also noted that wind energy costs continue to go down. Comparing the price of wind energy in 2011 to that in 2013, Kiernan noted that the cost per megawatt hour (MWh) of wind energy in Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) has steadily decreased, starting as high as $47 per MWh, and finishing as low as about $25 per MWh in some instances.

Kiernan acknowledged that the wind energy industry is young relative to more conventional sources of generation, but said this results in an environment in which evolution occurs rapidly. Wind towers have grown taller, he said, and blade designs and computer systems have improved dramatically.

While many people associate wind energy with high intermittency that requires more conventional forms of generation for backup, Kiernan demonstrated that wind energy actually requires about half the cost in reserves compared to those needed for conventional energy generation.

power-eng

[Graeme]

The energy transition: redefining investment portfolios

Investments in utilities have, for good reason, earned a reputation for steady, reliable, returns. And as the global energy transition sees renewable energy evolve from being a subsidised optionality, it would appear that it isn’t just the world’s power generation portfolio that is being redefined. Recognising that the adoption of utility-scale solar is being driven by market realities, there is growing evidence that investors too are reshuffling their portfolios.

Given that investing is hardly, if ever, driven by altruistic motives, this transition is a clear indication of the fact that renewables in general and solar in particular can now stand shoulder-to-shoulder with conventional power generation sources, technically and economically. And, as market realities drive global growth in solar energy, the fact is that utility-scale solar makes a good investment for a range of reasons; the most obvious one being resource reliability.

Solar advocates like to point to the fact that every hour the sun beams more energy onto our planet than we need to satisfy our total power needs for an entire year. Beyond the rhetoric, however, solar irradiation has never been better understood than it is today, making it a more reliable fuel source than it’s ever been. In fact, irradiation has been mapped in great detail in most parts of the world and sophisticated measurement technologies – such as pyranometers – supplement global data with the site-specific information required to accurately forecast energy output and facilitate engineering.

PV technology itself has evolved to such an extent that accurate energy forecasts can now be created for a planned solar project, factoring in solar irradiation, weather modelling and technological variables, such as improvements in conversion efficiency. The latter is crucial when you consider that companies continue to make leaps forward in efficiency and will continue to do so in increments that would have a positive impact on the profitability of a future project.


The final element that attracts investors is the fact that utility companies around the world are increasingly embracing solar. Legacy concerns about adding variable generation to the grid and its potential impact on stability have proven to have been unfounded. On the contrary, utility-scale solar has been shown to stabilise the grid, while enabling the optimisation of existing conventional generation assets, delivering cost-competitive electricity and, as a bonus, allowing utility companies to comply with ever more stringent emissions regulations.

Add lucrative but sustainably designed feed-in tariffs (FiTs) or long-term power purchase agreements (PPA) to the equation and it’s easy to see why experienced investors, with an eye on the future, have ramped up their solar investments and, by all indications, will continue to do so.

pv-tech

2014 Was a Breakthrough Year for Utility-Scale Solar in America

Over the next two years, America will build roughly 13 gigawatts of utility-scale solar PV plants. When up and running, those projects will surpass the country's cumulative solar capacity across all sectors reached at the end of 2013.

Why such a big surge in utility-scale solar after a brief slowdown in the project pipeline?

The answer is price.

Utilities are now able to consistently buy solar electricity from large plants for between 4.5 cents and 7.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, as shown by GTM Research data below.

Between 2008 and 2010, when America saw its first surge of utility-scale PV construction, power-purchase agreements were consistently priced at double or triple those prices (or even more).

A very important trend unfolded at the end of 2013 and into 2014: Utilities started buying more solar electricity outside of state mandates as prices for long-term solar contracts fell dramatically.

Because solar PV now beats natural gas on a levelized-cost-of-energy basis in numerous markets, it has become more prominent in competitive utility solicitations. That has opened up a half-dozen new markets around the country that had virtually no utility-scale projects before 2013.

greentechmedia

[MonteQuest]

Funny. The news lately seems to be backing me up on this decoupling nonsense. I got lots more to come.

No Growth Without Debt

There can be no growth without debt ratcheting ever higher.

That, at least, seems to be the message filtering through from policymakers.

Take the latest projections from the U.K.’s Office for Budget Responsibility, an official but independent economics agency. The OBR sees British household gross debt to income ratios rising back to their pre-crisis highs of a shade under 170% of income by the first quarter of 2018. And climbing ever more vertiginously from there.

Part of this rise is an offset to falling government debt levels.

And what does the U.K. gain from that borrowing boom? Roughly 2.3% annual GDP growth.

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/12/05/no-growth-without-debt/

[Graeme]

How the U.S. Can Sustainably Become the World's Top Economy Again

China has overtaken the U.S. as the world's top economy. But in taking a few examples from China, as well as investing in jobs that stay in America and taking steps to insure economic stability for the majority of American workers, the U.S. can come out on top again. And we can do it without having to decimate working people or the environment.


Photovoltaic energy by way of solar panels and wind energy manufacturing is on track to create exponentially more jobs than in the oil and gas sector over the next decade. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, the U.S. employs 625,000 people in the renewable energy sector. China employs 2.6 million. As oil production continues to slow down, those numbers will only grow larger. Over the next several decades, states investing in wind and solar power will experience dramatic job growth in the manufacturing, installation, transportation, and maintenance of wind turbines and solar panels. Prominent investors like Warren Buffett are betting big on the industry's long-term growth, as Berkshire Hathaway has already invested nearly $17 billion in wind, solar, and geothermal energy and aims to double that investment over the next decade.


It may take a decade or two, but if the U.S. implemented these solutions tomorrow, we would be on track to re-take the top spot in the world's fastest-growing economies. And we could do it while preserving the Earth for future generations and treating working people with the dignity they deserve.

huffingtonpost

California Heading For 500,000 Clean Energy Jobs

California’s booming clean energy industry currently employs nearly 450,000 people and is tipped to reach the half million mark within a year, according to a first-of-its-kind survey of America’s advanced energy sector.

The current number is more than the film, TV, radio, semiconductors and aerospace industries.

The survey, released by the Advanced Energy Economy Institute, found that 431,000 Californians (2.4 per cent of the state’s workforce) are involved in servicing advanced energy technologies, such as solar and wind power, electric vehicles and energy efficiency.

Advanced energy jobs grew five per cent in the past year – more than double the overall state job growth rate – and based on employer hiring plans is on track to grow 17 per cent in the coming year

Ambitious climate goals and a pro-active approach to supporting a zero-carbon future had contributed to situation says Kish Rajan, Director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development.

energymatters

[MonteQuest]

In 1972, I read a study published by the Club of Rome, entitled, The Limits to Growth. Based on a technique known as systems dynamics, developed by Professor Jay Forrester at MIT, a large-scale computer model was constructed to simulate likely future outcomes of the world economy and to simulate the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies.

One of the three conclusions of the study showed that piecemeal approaches to solving the individual problems will not be successful. To demonstrate this point, the authors arbitrarily double their estimates of the resource base and allow the model to trace out an alternative vision based on this new higher level of resources. In this alternative vision the collapse still occurs, but this time it is caused by excessive pollution generated by the increased pace of industrialization permitted by the greater availability of resources. The authors then suggest that if the depletable resource and pollution problems were somehow jointly solved, population would grow unabated and the availability of food would become the binding constraint. In this model the removal of one limit merely causes the system to bump subsequently into another one, usually with more dire consequences.

So, if renewable energy replaces fossil fuels and solves the GHG issue, then overshoot will be perpetuated to an even worse end.

[Graeme]

Again your conclusions are flawed - see the first post in this thread. I'll come back to this later; busy now.

[MonteQuest]

Again your conclusions are flawed

Ah, the bashing of the Club of Rome continues....

As its third and final conclusion, the study suggests that overshoot and collapse can be avoided only by an immediate limit on population and pollution, as well as a cessation of economic growth. The portrait painted shows only two possible outcomes: the termination of growth by self-restraint and conscious policy—an approach that avoids the collapse—or the termination of growth by a collision with the natural limits, resulting in societal collapse. Thus, according to this study, one way or the other, growth will cease. The only issue is whether the conditions under which it will cease will be congenial or hostile.

[Graeme]

My first comment is that the Club of Rome report shows that if we continue with BAU, then we are facing catastrophe. We need to change course, and that was what was proposed in the other thread I referred to. In fact, we are starting on the alternative path toward clean energy growth gradually right now. We have have been following the course outlined by the original study as pointed out by an Australian group recently.

Our research does not indicate that collapse of the world economy, environment and population is a certainty. Nor do we claim the future will unfold exactly as the MIT researchers predicted back in 1972. Wars could break out; so could genuine global environmental leadership. Either could dramatically affect the trajectory.

I agree. Catastrophe is not guaranteed. I tried to find some alternative views on Google and found these random choices. The first is this one:

The dematerialization of production by the service economy is complemented by an equally or more important dematerialization of needs. The growing centrality of services results from the fact that once basic material requirements are met, the aspiration is released for the satisfaction of higher order, non-material needs – communication, information, education, healthcare, entertainment, recreation, and culture – which are not only far less demanding of material inputs but also far less limited in their growth potential. Food consumption is subject to limits; knowledge, human relationship and enjoyment are not. Thus, the growth in relative importance of the service economy represents a progressive shift from the pursuit of physical security to the quest for human security, welfare, well-being and unending development of our individual and collective human potential. Of even greater significance are two other implications of the modern service economy that have gone largely unrecognized.


All human achievement is founded on a bedrock of values. Values have no limit. Ultimately it is the values we choose to embrace that determine the real limits to growth. Narrow self-interest, mindless exploitation of earth, blindness to the needs of others, unbridled greed and extravagance can only take humanity so far. Our problems are of our own making and so are our opportunities. The very powers and institutions we forge to further our aims too easily become fetters that confine and enslave us. We are imprisoned by structures of our own device, simply because we refuse to open the door and walk out. Will humanity insist on clinging to broken systems out of fear to experiment, or will it have the courage to invent and innovate freer, fairer, more equitable, and more civilized arrangements for wealth creation and governance? Humanity’s ultimate challenge is not to cope with the forces of external nature or the problems of production, but rather to wrestle with and master human character and its inclinations.

Here is the second one:

But there is no reason to continue to run our societies and our economies as we have. Nor is
there any reason to deprive ourselves and our progeny of the material comforts that the industrial
revolution has provided us in the name of “saving the planet.” Instead we can envision and
then construct a planetary civilization totally committed to enabling the self-actualization of
every single human being on the planet; a civilization that will have banished want and hunger
for all time; a civilization dedicated to realizing the god-like potential of the human spirit.

And finally this one by Professor Jorgen Randers:

And then, fourth and finally, if we want to help the world’s poor, we (the rich) should build and pay for a complete clean energy infrastructure in the poor world. This would ensure that they don’t have to build a cheaper, carbon-intensive energy system for the energy they sorely need: electricity, fuel and heat. If we did nothing else, that would solve a substantial part of the future climate and poverty problem.

[MonteQuest]

My first comment is that the Club of Rome report shows that if we continue with BAU, then we are facing catastrophe. We need to change course, and that was what was proposed in the other thread I referred to.

In the 42 years since The Limits to Growth was published, none of the major needed changes in our physical, economic, or social relationships have occurred. Do you actually think that 42 years of continued BAU can now be overcome? The horse is out of the barn. Too late to start talking about bolting the door. Cultural and asset inertia rule the day now.

In the 1970s, energy plans were drafted and adopted, calling for exactly the changes that would have made matters today much less dire: conservation standards, public transit projects, zoning changes to reduce the need for cars, the limiting of population growth, etc. Nobody has even looked at these plans since Ronald Reagan announced there were no limits and that it was “Morning in America.”

But there is no reason to continue to run our societies and our economies as we have. Nor is
there any reason to deprive ourselves and our progeny of the material comforts that the industrial
revolution has provided us in the name of “saving the planet.”

The epitome of human hubris towards Nature. No mention whatsoever of ecological overshoot.

[MonteQuest]

Our research does not indicate that collapse of the world economy, environment and population is a certainty. Nor do we claim the future will unfold exactly as the MIT researchers predicted back in 1972.

But 42 years into that prediction, the future has unfolded exactly as the models predicted as shown by the earlier post tracking the predictions with the observed outcome.

War is very likely. Environmental leadership; not so much.

[Graeme]

Yes, 42 years years of BAU is being overcome. You haven't been following recent trends. We are changing course from BAU and moving on an exponential path toward clean energy. That will become apparent over the next decade or two.

[MonteQuest]

But there is no reason to continue to run our societies and our economies as we have. Nor is there any reason to deprive ourselves and our progeny of the material comforts that the industrial revolution has provided us in the name of “saving the planet.”

Garret Hardin wrote in his Tragedy of the Commons: “It is fair to say that most people who anguish over the population problem are trying to find a way to avoid the evils of overpopulation without relinquishing any of the privileges they now enjoy.”

[MonteQuest]

Yes, 42 years years of BAU is being overcome. You haven't been following recent trends. We are changing course from BAU and moving on an exponential path toward clean energy. That will become apparent over the next decade or two.

But yet you wish to further economic growth with it, contrary to what is needed. And do it on a scale with a energy subsidy effect on the population.

[Graeme]

Yes that's right but you didn't read what I posted. We can still have our cake and eat it too (new energy system and economic growth based largely on services)

The dematerialization of production by the service economy is complemented by an equally or more important dematerialization of needs. The growing centrality of services results from the fact that once basic material requirements are met, the aspiration is released for the satisfaction of higher order, non-material needs – communication, information, education, healthcare, entertainment, recreation, and culture – which are not only far less demanding of material inputs but also far less limited in their growth potential.

[MonteQuest]

Yes that's right but you didn't read what I posted. We can still have our cake and eat it too (new energy system and economic growth based largely on services)

These authors are all about wishful thinking, dreaming about what if's. Woulda shoulda coulda.

Meanwhile, China and India are hell bent in getting as much consumption in as they can.