(The Wall Street Journal) - Blame it on technology, infrastructure or policy. But it's going to take many years for new technologies to make much of a dent in our current energy mix.

New energy technologies are coming that will shrink our use of fossil fuels and cut emissions of greenhouse gases.

Just don't expect them anytime soon.

Why the delay? After all, the computer revolution has shown how rapidly new innovations can be imagined, developed, brought to market and have an impact. But new energy technologies don't work that way—they can take years to gain just a toehold in the market, and 20 to 30 years to push aside existing products or techniques.

That's partly because of the sheer size of the energy market. Global power consumption is estimated to total 150 trillion kilowatt-hours in 2010. The utility industry in the U.S., the most energy-hungry nation on the planet, produced an estimated 3.7 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2009. Nearly half of that was produced by coal, while solar power contributed
less than 0.1%.

For the Wall Street Journal article, visit:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704757904575077312569582760.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

See the complete Energy report at:
http://online.wsj.com/page/energy-022210.html