Five innovations to watch in 2014

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As well bid farewell to 2013, and look forward to 2014 with anticipation, we hope - as every generation that has preceded us - that we can leave the world a little better than we found it.  Continued development, especially in  countries containing most of the world's  population, combined with economic forces will continue to challenge our ability to deliver on our desire.  Thankfully, we do have reason to hope.  The following summarizes the five great opportunities we have right at our fingertips.  These may not become everyday solutions in 2014, but they have the potential to make great strides in the next twelve months, and who knows...maybe at this time next year we could be talking about 2014 as "the Year of...."

Driverless cars
The evolution of the automobile (back) to all-electric fleet has begun already, and with more manufacturers joining the competition every year, we have great hope that the Western capitalist economy (combined with a strong focus on battery technology from the federal government) will deliver cost-effective vehicles.  Electric cars will not change much about our lives, but driverless cars will.  This will not only improve the safety and efficiency of the vehicles, but it will solve one of the great problems with the current mode of car ownership: the significant unused capacity that takes up land and resources.  Now, we spread car ownership around, use our cars far less often than we leave them stationary, and take up huge amounts of real estate with parking spots and garages.  The driverless car will allow us to share vehicle usage much more readily, which in turn will allow us to free-up real-estate and road infrastructure for much more efficient movement of resources. As a result, they will save us significant amounts of wasted time.

Evolution of the "sharing economy"

Cynics like to remind us that the "sharing economy" is just another word for "renting", and that there is nothing new about that.  I could not agree more.  The innovation will come in using advances in communications technology to tap into unused capacity within our personal capital (everything from our cars to our homes to our power drills) both for financial gain as well as for the betterment of our personal relationships.  Many like to lament the good old days when we could sit out on the front stoop with our neighbors, and borrow a cup of sugar or the lawn mower.  Although we have lost the social capital to make these relationships work, the advances in mobile technology will allow each of us to turn our assets into retable commodities. This will open us up to new ideas in what we consider a "rentable" service or item.  The revolution in the sharing economy will not come in thinking it some major innovation, but simply in opening our minds to a new balance of what we own and what we rent.

Geo-exchange energy and thermal batteries

We may look back on 2014 generally as the year of the battery, but in this case, I mean thermal battery - those that store hear energy instead of electricity.  For the better part of a century, we have known how to store heat energy in the earth when we do not need it, and recover it when we do.  This form of thermal storage (commonly known as geothermal energy, but to distinguish it from hot springs and other forms of true geothermal energy we now more accurately call geo-exchange) will allow us to drastically reduce the need for fossil fuel energy in temperate climates - those that require heating part of the year and cooling part of the year.  Advances in phase-change materials and improved building efficiencies will also mean that we may not need the earth to be our thermal battery, saving time and money while maintaining the reduction in operating costs.

Placing value on air
As the one political issue on this list, we have seen over twenty years of debate on how we as a country want to deal with carbon pollution, and almost forty years of serious discussion on other forms of pollution.  The past ten have focused on carbon, completely overshadowing the notion that we protect the air we breathe when we avoid pollution.  The next year will - if we want success - will shift the balance back toward a combination of climate change and breatheability.  Air stands as the only life requirement on which we do not place a monetary value, and as such, does not have priority over economic development or job creation - ideas that polluters throw into the discussion to sway politicians.  This year, grassroots and established environmental groups need to move from the idea of "carbon taxes" to a broader, more personal concept of "air valuation".  If you ask a person what value they place on their child or grandchild having more oxygen and nitrogen than carbon dioxide and monoxide (plus particulates and heavy metals), that will have greater sway against the arguments of industry than talking about implementing a sin tax.

Solar energy

The most under-reported story of 2013 has to be the meteoric change in the cost of renewable sources on energy compared with fossil fuels (including nuclear).  The next year will see a change in that ignorance.  Grid parity - the phrase used to describe the economic point when renewable energy costs to generate match those of traditional sources of electricity generation - will reach an even wider swath of the nation, changing the conversation in some of the more populated urban centers.  This will have a significant influence on the debate; as more people see a future of solar (including wind) energy, the less they will accept polluting alternatives, and the faster the market for those resources will collapse.  Contrary to popular thinking, it is not high prices of fossil fuels that will sound their death knell, but rather low demand, and therefore low prices, starving the fossil energy beast of the capital it needs.

Check back with me over the course of the next year and see if I am right.

Enjoy the journey, and have a safe and prosperous 2014!