Rocket science for competitive renewables?

The new global Apollo programme [1] is intended to galvanise efforts to further develop clean energy so that it becomes cheaper than fossil fuels – so that all the coal and oil and gas can stay in the ground because we won't need them anymore. It is led by illustrious men like Lord Nicholas Stern, of the famous UK climate report, and Lord John Browne, former CEO of BP, who obviously know a lot about the economics of energy (no women among them, unfortunately).

Ambivalent impressions

I find it great because clean energy is something we should make happen. Yesterday. For lots of reasons, including our climate, air pollution, and energy security. Burning fossil fuels is bad and we pay huge sums of money to Arab countries and Russia, countries with leaders that have a different notion of civic virtues. Even if Switzerland will never be completely self-sufficient in energy (and it won't be – we did the math [2]), we can at least do an order of magnitude better.

Unfortunately, comparing the effort to bring renewables into the mainstream to the original Apollo programme puts us in the wrong mindset. Clean energy does not involve a handful of photogenic jet fighter pilots blasting off on an epic journey to boldly go where no man has gone before. There will be no Earthrise photo or 'one small step for man' to capture the imagination of billions.

What we need instead

Instead we need those billions of people to install solar panels or heaters on their roof. We need thousands of wind turbines to be put into the landscape, and dozens of concentrating solar power plants built in the desert. Instead of a few hundred engineers building a couple of dozen rocket engines at a time, we need industrial volumes of solar cells and mirrors and turbines, and an army of engineers to install them.

Even the motivation is different: The original Apollo programme was the first of its kind, started by then-President John F. Kennedy to bolster US pride and advance technology, whereas this new programme is hardly the first effort to advance renewables and is intended to avoid the dangerous weather, respiratory illness and political entanglements that are bad for all of us. We won't provide our children with a dream, but we can save them from a nightmare.

The only parallels between the original Apollo programme and its contemporary namesake are the amount of money and the resolve that it needs. But we need the resolve now more in boardrooms and parliaments than among a bunch of engineers and hotshot pilots (though enough engineering is still needed to keep a lot of people at ETH busy for decades). Nobody needs to put their life on the line and shoot themselves through the empty void for a week. But some CEOs and politicians will have to put their profit statements and the support of their constituencies on the line.

Renewables have never been cheaper or easier to install. Renewables are already competitive in many situations, so the business case is there (again – we did the math [3]). All we need are a few good leaders.