World Without Oil: Better Place Builds a Future for Electric Vehicles ( Innovations Case Narrative : Better Place)
2009; The MIT Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1162/itgg.2009.4.4.125
ISSN1558-2485
Autores Tópico(s)Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies
ResumoEarly in 2005, at the World Economic Forum for Young Global Leaders in Davos, Switzerland, someone asked me, “How would you make the world a better place by 2020?” No one would have thought to call me an environmental crusader back then, and I was primarily focused on my job as an executive at SAP. However, as I thought about my answer to the question, it became increasingly clear that ending our addiction to oil, and therefore running an entire country without it, would be the most significant progress we could make. That is why, eventually, I founded Better Place. One needn’t be an environmentalist to see the immense costs of oil dependence. First, it is economically and physically unsustainable. Oil is a finite resource whose price will only rise in the long run, compared to sustainable resources that are not finite and normally become cheaper over time. Furthermore, it has a highly volatile price that, given the volumes and prices in question, can have massive impacts on the global economy (see Text Box 1). Even countries that produce oil seem to understand this: The United Arab Emirates invests all of its oil profits in sectors that will be sustainable in the long run, including tourism, financial services, media, education, and even alternative energy. Beyond the economic concerns, we find that our addiction to oil also has lead to the greatest transfer of wealth in
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