Solar power equipment has fallen in price steadily over recent years as human ingenuity finds better and more efficient ways to manufacture solar panels, and the associated equipment, invertors, racking and connectors. In 1977 you needed $77 to buy a single Watt of solar panel. Today that price is less than $0.50. This is just the solar panel price. Balance of plant (BOP) is the wiring, invertors, grid connection, sub stations and labor. Those costs have been coming down as well but not quite as fast. As the total price per Watt has fallen, against a backdrop of rising power prices, margins have expanded. We now stand at a time when, in many locations, islands and some towns and even countries, the electricity price is high enough that no subsidies are required for renewable sources of energy to be competitive. This is called "Grid Parity" and every year, it is a larger territory.

Wind has a similar trajectory to solar but started earlier and is basically a simpler and more efficient technology. Most wind turbines are about 30% capacity and 35% efficient. The Betz Law limits the amount of efficiency available to 59.6% and much ingenuity has gone into making real world efficiency as high as it is. Wind power has arguably the most different kinds of configurations with vertical, horizontal and blade-less turbines being three major types, but we only require to use the systems that are already proven and whose cost per generated kilowatt hour (kWh) is lowest and most reliable.

Electric appliances get more efficient over time. Critical, electrical energy consuming appliances for buildings are lightbulbs, air conditioners, fridges, water heaters and space heaters. At any given time, any building has a legacy of obsolescent equipment. As the price of electricity goes up, the savings that come from replacing a single LED bulb in electricity can pay for the bulb within a short space of time, often within months. If you address insulation, windows, leaks, lighting, ventilation, in other words upgrade the building's envelope AND you install LEDs, geothermal heating, heat exchanged ventilation, solar water heating, as well as solar and wind for power, your building is now approaching net zero condition. The potential for improvement in a country's energy consumption is one of the largest opportunities to reduce energy consumption and one that is growing fast.

Today biofuels represent a way of producing transportation fuels that are progressively carbon neutral, but often use the food part of crops as their basic feedstock. In the US 40% of the corn harvest is turned into ethanol by distilling the fermented corn mash. In the future we have answers to this challenge via using the plant part of the corn or sugar cane instead of the food part but for now we are restricted to doing our best to turn cellulose into biofuels with inefficient technologies. Innovation is also rampant in this arena with technologies today that can combine the C carbon, H hydrogen and O oxygen found in water and air to make hydrocarbons but still at high price. There is no question that the experience curve will cut prices, but that existing production methods are already cheaper when you take into account the carbon neutral potential of these fuels.

Geothermal power takes advantage of thermal properties found underground. This is a geological phenomenon. Tectonic plates around the world are constantly shifting and large parts of these plates are driven underneath neighboring plates, descending into the Earth's mantle where they melt. At these locations there are often places where the resulting heat which can be 572 °F (300 °C), rises close to the surface. Geothermal power takes advantage of these locations by injecting water thousands of feet into the ground and then taking the superheated water up again where it flashes into a turbine and generates power. Alternatively, ordinary surface soil, which in many places is over 6 feet deep, can take advantage of year round stable temperatures which are about 56 °F (13 °C). In temperate climates this is cool in the summer and warm in the winter. A heat pump can take advantage of these stable temperatures to condition the interior of a buildings with much greater economy and zero carbon emissions than fossil fuels.

Wind and solar are intermittent sources of power. Most forget that every source of power is intermittent to a greater or lesser extent but when it comes to wind and solar storage is a very powerful aid. Base-load power is something that can come from solar power or wind if storage is used. In fact there are four main uses for storage. One is to fill the solar and wind gaps. The second is to charge up with cheap overnight electricity and then sell it into the more expensive daytime market. The third is to use the storage to smooth demand and supply on the electric grid. The fourth is as uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, where a power stoppage is immediately compensated for by the storage. Storage technologies are now going through Moore's Law as the price and density of a kWh now improve on a monthly basis and there is a strong possibility of a critical innovation improving the outlook.