According to the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy, the total amount of mass and energy in the universe is a constant. In other words you can convert mass into energy or energy into mass, but you cannot destroy or create either. Thus, when we talk about energy generation, we are actually talking about converting one form of energy into another, for example: stored chemical energy into electricity.

The problem with the current paradigm is that we are converting a lot of non-renewable chemical energy, in the form of oil, into a lot of wasted electrical and kinetic energy (by which I mean moving vehicles.)

The planet Earth is being bathed in massive amounts of energy in the form of sunlight. Millennia ago this sunlight was converted into oil, natural gas, and coal, but this conversion process has stopped and we are "burning" through our available supplies at a frightening rate. No matter if we find more reserves of fossil fuels, or if we find more efficient ways of converting them, the problem remains that there is only so much fossil fuel on this planet and no new reserves of it are being created.

Somehow, we have to find an efficient, clean, and environmentally friendly way of converting the sunlight hitting the Earth into a clean and environmentally friendly form of energy that can be used to light buildings, run cars, and do all of the other tasks that fossil fuels perform for us on a daily basis.

Are we smart enough and have the will to come up with a solution?