see news.nationalgeographic.com/news/innovat...ar-renewable-energy/

...In the developed world, Nocera points out, venture capitalists want a return on their investment in two to five years—"and five is really generous," he says. Setting up an alternative, photosynthetic-based energy system will never satisfy the appetite for a quick return on investment. "What's the VC community good at?" he says. "An app that a kid can do in a college dorm—which many have done at Harvard. And it gives them their success stories, and makes them all rich. But these are apps. We're not talking about high-end [innovation]. With energy, we're talking about changing a massive infrastructure. There's nothing a kid in his college room dorm is going to do that's going to change a massive infrastructure."

How massive? There's no firm, agreed-upon figure on America's historical investment in the current power infrastructure—the power plants, the coal mines, the oil rigs and fracking wells, the refineries, the railroads and ships that transport fuels, the wires that bring electricity to virtually every home. Nocera estimates the number at $150 trillion since the mid-19th century, and it is the $150 trillion gorilla in the energy debate.

"There's nobody in a Harvard lab or at MIT who's going to make a discovery—one discovery—that's going to change an infrastructure that this country built over 150 years," he says. "You're at hundreds of trillions of dollars. So what is one person with a bunch of students in a lab going to do?"

That is why he believes the revolution in renewable energy will happen not in the developed world, with its entrenched infrastructure and its impatient venture capitalists, but in places like Africa and India, where there is no existing infrastructure to block the way. And don't mistake Nocera's interest in the poor for altruism; it's pure practicality.

"People say, 'Oh, it's so nice that Nocera is doing something for the poor.' It makes my blood curdle! I'm not helping the poor. I'm a jerk! The poor are helping me. They don't have an infrastructure, so they'll walk you to a renewable energy future."...

I see much similarities to large scale so called advanced sanitation infrastructures around the world. It needs as well an "out of the box" thinking to make it different/sustainable.

Regards,
Detlef SCHWAGER