Word: fossilizing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Europe, Southeast Asia and all sorts of places in between, something remarkable is happening. New, carbon-free energy technologies that do not rely on fossil fuels are moving from experimental curiosity to commercial reality, economically turning sunlight, wind and other renewable resources into useful forms of energy. Although the new devices provide less than 1% of the world's energy, they are advancing rapidly. If the negotiators wrapping up their 10-day meeting in Kyoto this week are looking for an engineering solution to the problems of global warming and climate change, these technologies could provide the blueprint...
...largely finished by 1910. Cities all over the world were transformed as automobiles and electric lights replaced horse-drawn carriages and gas lamps. Old technologies that had prevailed for centuries became obsolete in a matter of years, and the 20th century emerged as the age of fossil fuels...
...global wind-power industry, a $2 billion-a-year business, has seen its market nearly quadruple since 1992. Two decades of research have yielded a thoroughly modern wind turbine with tough fiber-glass blades and electronic controls. The cost of the electricity produced is comparable to that of fossil-fuel power and still falling...
...produces is water. Small, mass-produced and without moving parts, the devices are a spin-off of the U.S. space program, which uses them to meet the electricity needs of the shuttle fleet. Fuel cells could one day sit in millions of basements producing power and hot water without fossil fuels...
...quickly the world's energy systems are transformed will depend in part on whether fossil-fuel prices remain low and the entrenched opposition of many oil and electric-power companies can be overcome. The pace of change will be heavily influenced by the climate agreement that emerges in Kyoto and the national policies that follow. In the 1980s, California provided tax incentives and access to the power grid for new energy sources, which enabled the state to dominate renewable-energy markets worldwide. Similar incentives and access have been offered by European countries in the 1990s. Sometimes such measures are needed...