Ralph: History has taught us that humankind often needs a disaster to start reformation and make huge leaps forward. Obviously it is better to prevent such disasters, but that is only possible if we strongly focus on getting everybody on our side. What is more important to turn the tide: save energy or invest in renewables? What should be our focus point?
Paul Gilding: We should not choose. Because the only way to do the scale of transition fast enough is to do both. We need to be not just using energy more efficiently, but we also need to be closing down old coal power stations. Not building new ones, but closing down. That means we have to dramatically reduce the energy we use in the short term to be able to afford to do more expenses in the field of renewable energy. In that way we can afford to close down those plants. Energy efficiency is very, very important, it buys us time and it gives us a breathing space to make the transition to renewables.
