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In the latest Electric Power Research Institute Journal, an article titled "Hydropower Reservoirs: A Question of Emissions" notes that reservoirs used for hydropower and for pumped-hydro energy storage are not necessarily as green as you might imagine. Or rather, they might be too green: carbon-rich organic material that accumulates on the reservoir floor can be the source of carbon emissions. A recent study of the 90-year-old Lake Wohlen, in Switzerland, for example, found high emissions of methane, as recently reported in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, in an article titled: "Extreme Methane Emissions from a Swiss Hydropower Reservoir: Contribution from Bubbling Sediments."

President Jimmy Carter signed a bill calling for 10,000 megawatts of OTEC capacity to be up and running by 1999. Then oil prices stabilized, administrations changed, and other than a few demonstration projects, nothing happened.

“When people actually have to build stuff that’s got to survive in the ocean and be insured, costs double. Insurance premiums triple,” he said. “And all of a sudden, what looked good when you announced it, you can’t actually get finance to build.”

Binger added that many small island nations still haven’t recovered from the debt they incurred during the oil crisis that began in 1979.

Ecologically sustainable energy technologies comprise renewable energy supply together with improved efficiency of energy conversion and use. Together they can mitigate the climate crisis, greatly reduce pollution of air, water and land, create more jobs than are lost in the fossil fuel industries they replace, and contribute to energy independence and social equity. The best technical energy supply strategy is transitioning fossil fuelled electricity to renewables, electrifying most heating and transportation, and producing fuels by using renewable electricity to make hydrogen and ammonia. This technological transition is necessary and urgent, but unlikely to be sufficiently rapid to avoid irreversible climate change. Substantial demand reductions are needed by rich countries, beyond the technological measures of energy efficiency. This would entail an end to growth in energy production, materials extraction, land clearing and population, that is, the creation of a steady-state economy within Earth’s biocapacity.