Fortune - 04.2020

(Wang) #1
T

HE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY faces a
classic business problem: Someone else
has come up with a better technology.
Over the past decade, engineering ad-
vances have helped drive down the price
of solar panels and wind turbines by some 90%. Clean
energy is now the cheapest way to generate power in
most of the world. And today, storage batteries are on the
same plummeting price curve—so that, increasingly, the
sun’s habit of going down at night is no big deal. Even the
car, which has helped define our culture and consumes
vast quantities of fossil fuel, is changing fast. No honest
person who has driven a Tesla will dispute that it’s a su-
perior machine: fast, with few moving parts, and a quiet
elegance that makes a rumbling muscle car seem more
than a little old-fashioned.
Faced with that kind of challenge, incumbent industries
usually play for time, trying to eke out another decade or
two of profits before wandering off to a well-appointed re-

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ESS.W.04.20.XMIT.indd 53 FINAL 3/10/2020 5:16:08 PM

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