Clayton Christensen discusses why solar energy has better potential outside the U.S.
Transcript
If you ever think that solar electricity will take root in the United States, you’re nuts. That’s because this is the most demanding market of energy that mankind could conceive.
All of our buildings are air-conditioned. We leave the lights on all night. You have genuine technical problems, like night happens once every day. Clouds get in the way. And the grid is the world’s most reliable source of service that has ever existed. This is 99.99997 percent reliable.
For solar energy to ever to compete head-on against power over the grid is just a pipe dream. Amongst the two billion people in parts of Asia and most of Africa who are non-consumers of electricity, solar energy is a booming business. Nobody has to subsidize it, because it is infinitely better than nothing.
And my guess is that whether solar energy ever becomes a viable, green substitute for what we have in America today will not emerge from trying to make the technology work, but rather it’s just the folks out there on the ground competing against nonconsumption and then improving it there.