ALTERNATIVE ENERGY QUOTES
quotations about alternative & renewable energy
To truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy.
BARACK OBAMA
Address to Joint Session of Congress, Feb. 24, 2009
Once the renewable infrastructure is built, the fuel is free forever. Unlike carbon-based fuels, the wind and the sun and the earth itself provide fuel that is free, in amounts that are effectively limitless.
AL GORE
Our Choice
The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.
RALPH NADER
Loose Talk
Perhaps because of its technical, economic, and thermodynamic advantages, a renewable power sector would have six benefits over one reliant on conventional power plants, including (1) lower negative externalities per kWh, (2) more stable and predictable fuel prices, (3) fewer greenhouse gas emissions, (4) less water use, (5) improved efficiency, and (6) greater local employment and revenue.
BENJAMIN K. SOVACOOL & CHARMAINE WATTS
The Electricity Journal, May 2009
The sunlight ... that strikes Earth's land surface in two hours is equivalent to total human energy use in a year. While much of that sunlight becomes heat, solar energy is also responsible for the energy embodied in wind, hydro, wave, and biomass, each with the potential to be harnessed for human use. Only a small portion of that enormous daily, renewable flux of energy will ever be needed by humanity.
CHRISTOPHER FLAVIN
State of the World 2008
The sun provides more energy in one hour than all humanity uses, in all forms, in a single year. Sunlight can provide us with its own resolution to our energy problems. The only transformation required is for humanity to reduce, or end, consumption of stored solar (as fossil fuels) and, in its place, use freely available "fresh" solar.
DAVID S. FINDLEY
Solar Power for Your Home
Studies show that investments to spur renewable energy and boost energy efficiency generate far more jobs than oil and coal.
JEFF GOODELL
"Mitt Romney's Disastrous Energy Plan", Rolling Stone, Sep. 14, 2012
The cost of renewable energy is largely a function of initial investment cost.... Once a renewable energy facility is built, at least with fixed-rate financing, the cost of power from that facility is fixed throughout its lifetime. Not so for fossil fuels, where the cost of power will vary in the future with fuel prices.
JOSE AMAYA
Development of Renewable Energy in Emerging Economies
There is one forecast of which you can already be sure: someday renewable energy will be the only way for people to satisfy their energy needs. Because of the physical, ecological and (therefore) social limits to nuclear and fossil energy use, ultimately nobody will be able to circumvent renewable energy as the solution, even if it turns out to be everybody's last remaining choice. The question keeping everyone in suspense, however, is whether we shall succeed in making this radical change of energy platforms happen early enough to spare the world irreversible ecological mutilation and political and economic catastrophe.
HERMAN SCHEER
Energy Autonomy: The Economic, Social and Technological Case for Renewable Energy
I heard people talking about how renewable energy doesn't work because it's intermittent, and I remember saying, "It's intermittent if you just have it over a really small area, but weather is big." If you look at a weather map, you see, for example, a giant high [pressure system] in the western United States and a low [pressure system] that's windy in the east, and you can kind of deduce that if you can share the power over a large area, then it's not intermittent.
ALEXANDER MACDONALD
"Study shows US could convert its economy to renewable energy without battery breakthrough", PRI, March 6, 2016
The road to safer, cleaner future has not been straight, but it is a one-way street.
ANDREW BEEBE
"The death of 'alternative energy'", GreenBiz, August 16, 2017
Because the wind blows during stormy conditions when the sun does not shine and the sun often shines on calm days with little wind, combining wind and solar can go a long way toward meeting demand, especially when geothermal provides a steady base and hydroelectric can be called on to fill in the gaps.
MARK Z. JACOBSON & MARK A. DELUCCHI
Scientific American, Nov. 2009
Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.
JIMMY CARTER
televised speech, Apr. 18, 1977
We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can't stand windmills at any price.
JAMES LOVELOCK
The Toronto Sun, Jun. 23, 2012
In reality, Republicans have long been at war with clean energy. They have ridiculed investments in solar and wind power, bashed energy-efficiency standards, attacked state moves to promote renewable energy and championed laws that would enshrine taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels while stripping them from wind and solar.
JEFF GOODELL
"Mitt Romney's Disastrous Energy Plan", Rolling Stone, Sep. 14, 2012
It is time for a sustainable energy policy which puts consumers, the environment, human health, and peace first.
DENNIS KUCINICH
speech, Sep. 27, 2005
Clearly, we need more incentives to quickly increase the use of wind and solar power; they will cut costs, increase our energy independence and our national security and reduce the consequences of global warming.
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
speech at Cleantech Venture Forum VIII, Oct. 25, 2005
Renewable energy is, by definition, replenished on a regular basis.... The two renewable exceptions of geothermal energy and tidal energy owe their existence to the origins of the universe. Tidal energy comes from the motion of the Moon around the Earth. Geothermal Energy comes from the heat generated deep within the Earth from the decay of naturally radioactive ore.... Although these energy resources are not being replenished, they will still last a billion years, and are therefore usually put into the renewable energy category.
BRIAN BLACK & RICHARD FLAREND
Alternative Energy
The use of alternative energy is inevitable as fossil fuels are finite.
GAWDAT BAHGAT
Alternative Energy in the Middle East
Of course the greatest obstacle to meeting the challenge of 100 percent renewable electricity in 10 years may be the deep dysfunction of our politics.... It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now.
AL GORE
speech at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Jul. 17, 2008