“WIN, WIN, WIN, WIN” - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 166

to the future of the U.S. economy believe they've identii ed two: exports
and innovation.

T he case for exports is straightforward. Unlike with fossil-fuel

energy production, the scope of the U.S. clean energy business
isn't constrained by physical fundamentals such as how much oil the
United States has underground. Once one includes the potential for
exports, then, the possible market for clean energy technology becomes
enormous. h e International Energy Agency, for example, analyzed one
scenario involving an ambitious global pursuit of clean energy and
found that the market for clean energy technologies could top a trillion
dollars by 2030, equivalent to nearly 5 percent of the U.S. economy. 60
Yet even capturing that entire market (much of which, incidentally,
involves things such as construction and installation services that are
inherently local and hence can't be imported or exported) wouldn't
fundamentally change the United States.
One can push the case even further, though, assuming that clean
energy ultimately becomes the dominant way of fueling the global
economy. Figures for world spending on energy are tough to come by,
but some basic estimates can help. Suppose the world spends a tenth of
its income on energy, including everything from fuel to power plants to
energy-consuming technologies such as cars, trucks, and air condition-
ers. (h is is probably a conservative number.) h en the total size of
the global energy market is equal to 40 percent of the U.S. economy,
a i gure that would increase as the world economy grew faster than
the United States. Capturing a big slice of that could deliver a massive
economic windfall to the United States. Yet it is dii cult to see how it
could grab a wildly oversized chunk of the market. h e basic ingredi-
ents required for being a big player in energy technology markets—
well-trained scientists, engineers, and managers, as well as strong i scal
and regulatory environments—are not areas where the United States
has, or will ever have, anything close to a monopoly.
Nor is there any reason to believe that technology initially developed
in the United States will consistently be commercialized and manu-
factured there. Less than a year at er I visited MiaSolé, under pressure
from a glut of cheap Chinese solar panels the company was sold to a