21 Quotes by Christopher Flavin

Rising demand for energy, food and raw materials by 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians is already having ripple effects worldwide.

My bet is that China is indisputably number one in renewable energy within five years. They now have key state sponsored support and one advantage of a centralized economy is that these massive projects can be put into effect very quickly.

The question for oil executives is whether you're in the oil business or the energy business.

The real potential of electricity lies not in providing social amenities but in stimulating long-term economic development

Building a world where we meet our own needs without denying future generations a healthy society is not impossible, as some would assert. The question is where societies choose to put their creative efforts

Urgency and vision are the twin pillars on which humanity's hope now hangs.

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.

Improved energy productivity and renewable energy are both available in abundance—and new policies and technologies are rapidly making them more economically competitive with fossil fuels. In combination, these energy options represent the most robust alternative to the current energy system, capable of providing the diverse array of energy services that a modern economy requires. Given the urgency of the climate problem, that is indeed convenient.

Renewable biofuels are meanwhile making inroads in the transportation fuels market and are beginning to have a measurable impact on demand for petroleum fuels, contributing to a decline in oil consumption in the United States in particular starting in 2006... The 93 billion liters of biofuels produced worldwide in 2009 displaced the equivalent of an estimated 68 billion liters of gasoline, equal to about 5 percent of world gasoline production.