Founding Principle #2: This Weblog also intends to expand on the notion that so-called "emerging economies" such as China and India are better positioned to pioneer 21st-century energy economies (and prove alternate infrastructural models) than the mature industrial powers in North America, Western Europe and Japan.

Why? First, because the wealthiest countries of the 20th century are over-invested in the past. 

• Politically, they are hindered by powerful economic actors with vested interests in maintaining the status quo – or at least in delaying change as long as possible. High-growth markets, on the other hand, have the capacity to more easily jump to new models and paradigms, rather repeating the economic development steps taken by their historical forebears.

Second, because they must.

• These countries cannot afford to continue building their economies based on the inefficient, dirty models adopted in the late 19th and 20th centuries, when fossil-fuel energy was both cheap and superabundant. Not only are fossil fuel supplies insufficient, both their national and global environments are already too damaged to make following the same route once again a possibility.
• The demographics and economic growth of these countries create enormous demand for energy. First the populations are huge, growing, and becoming more affluent. The result is pressure: Per-capita appetite for energy is growing. These populations are also predominantly youthful. While Western environmental policies are motivated by improving the outlook for future generations, the future generations of China, India and other developing nations are already on earth — and in numbers equivalent of several future generations of Americans or Western Europeans.
• Finally, population densities in these countries are much higher than those seen in the history of the wealthy nations, meaning that the pain of polluting and wasteful approaches has a more immediate and severe impact on quality of life.

I don’t believe that these countries must generate all the technical innovation necessary to enable new, clean energy models from within. My prediction is simply that they are best-positioned to show the world how to implement these models and prove how they can work on a mass scale. This not only can happen, in my view, it is a key prerequisite for improving global human prospects. Once deployed successfully in economies of the one billion people range, green energy technologies would gain economies of scale that would make them much more easily adoptable by the rest of the planet — even in the poorest of nations would then leap at the opportunity to follow suit.

Let me explain that point: Today, the biggest barrier in the way of acting on the impulse to do the right thing, i.e. deploying sustainable energy infrastructure, is the fact that 20th-century fossil-fuel based systems are the “safe,” default option. They’re inexpensive (in terms of capital expenditure per power-generation capacity), they guarantee the big capacity that energy-hungry nations need, and reliable professional expertise on how to build and run them is abundant. And of course, they come from mature, competitive industries — if you have the capital to spend, a large number of established companies will come and fight to make you the best offer. More importantly, banks are willing to offer loans to build such tried-and-true technologies — the business cases are well known. The alternative approaches that we must pioneer in the 21st century, by contrast, require much harder work in terms of due diligence, appear significantly more expensive (i.e. capex per megawatt) and require a greater stomach for financial risk. It’s unexplored territory.

My hypothesis is that any significant initiative in China or India, based on sheer size alone, would dissolve much of the above barrier. Based on economies of scale, it would reduce prices dramatically, establish a track record and clearer business-case assumptions, thus reducing perceived financial risk and freeing up credit. Thus, the enlightened self-interest of these countries stands to serve as an essential engine for the greening of the planet as a whole.

These are my current bedrock assumptions, subject to challenge of course. Entries in the 21st Century Power weblog will hopefully bring news, data and insight that relates to the above hypothesis.