Twenty years from now, will Americans light their homes with solar power or wind? Plug their cars into an electric grid? Replace oil-based petroleum from the Middle East with bio-fuels made from algae?
Betting on which of those technologies will take hold in the marketplace -- and which of them will wither -- would be a tough call in even the best economic environment. But in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, many bets are off -- and it's not yet known if the $50 billion in clean tech initiatives included in the U.S. government's economic stimulus package will bring more private capital to the game.
Still, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists at the recent Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference agreed that changes in the energy marketplace are inevitable, although there was some disagreement about the pace. For example, in a session titled, "What's Driving Clean Tech?" one panelist envisioned fleets of zero-emission electric cars in the next 10 years, while another believed gasoline and diesel would continue to dominate.
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