World energy demand can be largely fulfilled by renewable energy technologies. There is however a strong opposition to change arising from the fossil fuel industry and from governments of most oil-producing nations and major fossil fuel users such as the United States and Britain.

There are significant advantages of shifting away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy and toward greater reliance on renewables. Decreasing the impacts of global warming is certainly the most significant advantage. Global carbon emissions must be reduced at least 70% over the next hundred years to stabilize atmospheric CO₂ concentrations at 450 parts per million (ppm). The sooner societies begin to make the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, the lower will be the impacts and the associated costs of both climate change and emissions reductions.

Other costs of conventional energy production and use are:

1.    degradation of the environment through resource extraction
2.    air, soil, and water pollution
3.    acid rain
4.    biodiversity loss
5.    fuelling of the war industry, and therefore a threat to peace and Earth security and, in consequences, a threat to the global life-support systems
6.    global economic losses due to natural disasters are in line with events anticipated as a result of global warming
7.    nuclear power is one of the most expensive means of generating electricity and is responsible for nuclear accidents, weapons proliferation, and nuclear waste problems
8.    political, economic and military conflicts over limited resources such as oil become more important as demand increases
9.    reliance on fossil fuels create less jobs; renewables create four times more jobs
10.    fossil fuels do not bring electricity in many poor countries but renewables can; no electricity means no access to education, clean water, improved health care, communications, and entertainment

a)    are consistent and long-term to allow industries and markets to adjust
b)     provide access to the electric grid
c)    educate and inform the public
d)    encourage individual and cooperative ownership of projects
e)    establish standards
f)    incorporate all costs in the price of energy sources