In 1910 Thomas Edison, the founder of the commercial electricity industry, was quoted as saying, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait ‘til oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”Today, over 100 years later, we are only getting down to this task. We haven’t run out of fossil fuels yet, but we surely can’t afford to wait much longer.This fourth installment of the Energy White Paper series will focus on how best to produce the energy we need in order to align with the targets we discussed in our last article.We have proposed that 30 percent of our electricity should be generated from renewable resources by 2020, and this is certainly an ambitious goal. What this means, in part, is that we hope to see private investors working on utility scale projects in solar power, wind power and/or ocean power.In our capacity as policy makers and regulators, we are working on zoning areas of land for solar farms and sea bed for large wind projects, and there is also innovative research being conducted at the moment as to the viability of ocean swell power.Leaving projects to utility-scale service providers is only part of the picture. When it comes to generating electricity, homeowners and businesses can also do their part.A homeowner can generate some if not ALL of their own electricity through carefully placed solar photovoltaic panels.Prices for solar PV continue to drop, as there are many manufacturers entering the market all vying for a piece of the growing Green economy.What we also have to do is ensure that there is a market for the excess energy, and that both the utility and independent power producers are compensated fairly for their respective roles in the process.This means that interconnection standards and agreement need to be developed, with the utility as a primary stakeholder, in order to assure safety, service and pricing.In meeting the overall goal of 30 percent renewables by 2020, we will need roughly 5000 homes to participate in some measure of renewable self-generation.We recognise that for changes to be adopted, we need to change how we do things as well. This is why we are working on supplementing the Building Code to require renewable energy generating technology from the inception of a project, when the cost of such things is most easily absorbed.This will require a rigourous process of public consultation, and we anticipate these supplemental codes to be in place before 2014.We also know that our Planning process has to respond to the increased number of applicants who wish to integrate renewable energy technologies at their property, and we have already begun making strides to ensure that the process runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible.We can also reduce our reliance on fossil fuels by making much better use of the fuel we do import. For instance, we can generate more electricity if we make use of the waste heat that is a by-product of the process of generating electricity, we can use it to assist in the production of refrigeration or air conditioning. This process is called co-generation, and it could be a good solution for businesses like the hospitality industry, data centers or even large supermarkets.All of this will require constant improvements to regulation and policy, and at the Department of Energy we are constantly working to ensure that we keep abreast of any new developments in the field.Among our greatest challenges in encouraging the uptake of renewable energy technologies, and indeed energy efficient technologies, is changing the way we all think about the energy we use.As we have discussed before, fossil fuels are finite fuels, and once the supplies are depleted, there is no way to replenish them.Furthermore, our environment is rapidly becoming less able to deal with the effects of the continued use of fossil fuels, so the time to change is now while we still have some time left.Let’s not wait another 100 years.