Building New Industries for the Coming Sustainable Economy

by Lester R. Brown Building a new economy, one that can sustain economic progress, involves phasing out old industries, restructuring existing ones, and creating new ones. This new economy will be powered by renewable sources of energy, will have a more diverse transport system–relying more on rail, buses, and bicycles, and less on cars–and will recycle everything. For example, coal use will be phased out, replaced by efficiency gains in many countries, but also by natural gas, as in the United Kingdom, and by wind power, as in Denmark and Germany. The world automobile industry will face a modest restructuring as it shifts from the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine to the gas-electric hybrid, the diesel-electric hybrid, plug-in hybrids, or high-efficiency diesel. This will require a retooling of engine plants and the retraining of automotive engineers and automobile mechanics. The new economy will also bring major new industries, ones that either do not yet exist or are just beginning. Wind electricity generation is one such industry, incorporating three subsidiary industries: turbine manufacturing, installation, and maintenance. Now in its embryonic stage, this promises to become the foundation of the new energy economy. Millions of turbines soon will be converting wind into cheap […]

Read More