Economy: New One Continues to Shine Brightly on the Horizon

But alas the U.S., who once started moving towards alternatives some forty years ago till the brakes were locked on innovation, once our very own on this planet, is trailing far behind many others, they who once envied us!

Forget the Dow, here are the numbers that mattered this week

Follow the Dow, and the economic forecast looks pretty black right about now. But in the midst of the old economy's failure, a new one continues to shine brightly on the horizon.

FUTURE SO BRIGHT: Solar towers shine on the horizon in southern Spain (Photo: Ashley Bristowe)

Aug 05 2011 - If the vertiginious dive of the Dow Jones has left you feeling gloomy this week, your biggest problem might be that you’re paying too careful watch over the erratic EKG of a dying system, the one the International Energy Agency described a few years ago as “patently unsustainable.” Look intead at the numbers that matter to a truly sustainable system, and the future looks bright even after this wild week.

Herewith, a rosy forecast from the MNN weather desk and a bullish report on the green economy. Let’s call it the MNN Innovation Index.

24kwh:
This is the amount of energy a Nissan Leaf’s battery can store, enough to power the average Japanese home for two days, IT World reports. This is also the dawning of a promised smart-grid revolution in which EV owners power up on the cheap overnight and then sell power back to the grid when demand peaks during the day - about as win-win as a scenario can get.

50,000 MW:
The estimated amount of solar energy Germany will add to its grid in the time it would take to build a single proposed transmission line to bring 4,000 MW of Iowa’s wind power to markets further east, according to John Farrell of the New Rules Project. And it points to the real motive power of renewable energy – its ability to decentralize the grid, to turn energy consumers into energy producers, to usher in what the late, great Hermann Scheer, father of the most important piece of energy legislation written so far this century, liked to call “the Second Industrial Revolution.”

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