The steam engine took 44 years from James Watt’s first practical machine to the first railway. The atom was split in 1917 but the first commercial nuclear power station arrived in 1954.
The first successful fracked shale gas well was drilled in 1998, but the technique did not take off for a decade. Energy innovation takes a long time.
In 2016, though, the past decade’s new energy technologies began to make inroads. Solar is becoming the lowest cost electricity in most sunny regions. From 12 US cents or more per kilowatt hour in 2012, Dubai procured its latest solar power plant for 2.99 cents in May.
In Eur­ope, giant turbines, floating systems and new mapping of wind resources are making offshore wind power more attractive.
Better batteries offer both ­truly mainstream electric vehicles, and the storage of electricity from intermittent renewable sources.
The cost of shale oil and gas production has declined dramatically under the pressure of low commodity prices. Outside North America, the shale revolution has barely started, but Argentina, Russia, the UK and elsewhere have the right rocks. Floating liquefied natural gas terminals for export and import make international gas trade far more flexible.
Emerging areas of innovation may at first sight seem unrelated to energy but open unexpected vistas. In a decade, we can imagine smart homes that control their electricity production, storage and use remotely. Self-driving electric cars charge themselves while waiting for a passenger.
Artificial life forms generate fuels from carbon dioxide in the air, recover oil and gas like tree roots, or clean up pollution. World trade shifts to highly efficient drone ships, while 3D printing cuts waste but may encourage a new, unfettered and inventive materialism.
On the further horizon are radical new breakthroughs, in limitless clean nuclear fusion; Hyperloops that carry passengers from Dubai to Abu Dhabi in 12 minutes; or hypersonic (and ­fuel-hungry) flights from London to Sydney in the matter of two hours.
Space tourism, automation and machine intelligence, human life extension and virtual reality may create radical changes in society, and so in energy use.
Perhaps physical travel becomes near-obsolete, or perhaps the energy demands of a new orbital society grow enormously.
Such energy technologies will fight a Darwinian struggle. Economic viability will be essential but not sufficient – some cost-competitive systems will fail because they are perceived, perhaps inaccurately, as unsafe or environmentally unacceptable; they do not appeal to certain pol­itical constituencies; they fail to adapt to users’ needs or the whims of fashion; or they fall behind in the race to achieve a critical mass of deployment.
Older technologies still have the advantages of proved reliability, familiarity and a large installed base. Running a fully depreciated coal or nuclear power station remains very cheap. The pressure of competition will also drive the incumbents to innovate. Incentives – such as free parking, dedicated lanes and exemptions from vehicle tax and road tolls for electric cars – will become unaffordable or impractical as new energy systems enter the mainstream.
And batteries to store entire nations’ shifting electricity loads between seasons will have to be built on enormous scales and use vast quantities of sometimes esoteric materials.
The technological element is easy; the human, difficult. The great transformations require changes in people’s behaviour, changes in the organisation of companies and even society.
Mighty corporations founder while others are raised up. Whole industrial regions dwindle to insignificance – the coal miners of West Virginia or Yorkshire cast on to the scrap heap as Silicon Valley, Cambridge and Shenzhen rise.
Some politicians will make costly and fruitless attempts to hold back the tide instead of intelligently sailing with it and offering a helping hand to those who are stranded. Trying to bet on winners in the new energy economy is doomed to fail. But success is achievable for individuals, companies and countries by being flexible, open-minded and a little lucky.
Robin Mills is the chief executive of Qamar Energy and the author of The Myth of the Oil Crisis.

Source: The National