Today crude prices are back testing $50/barrel range, as the latest US inventories show supply at multi-decade highs. So much for OPEC’s output cuts since December. Technological advance continues to unleash new product worldwide, just as efficiencies and alternatives are leapfrogging over old restraints daily. The new preference to consume local, includes everything from food and goods to energy.
In 2016 Tesla unveiled their new solar shingles (available 2017) that convert individual roofs into architecturally stunning, clean, energy factories like this one.
But that’s just the beginning. Others are already building with photovoltaic glass that makes entire structures massive solar receptors. Others are developing woven solar fabrics that have photoactive dyes coating individual threads, making each fiber a miniature solar panel.
For personal electronic devices, others are designing solar capturing 
jackets and bags that use flexible panels laminated on top of fabrics, like this one on right from Tommy Hilfiger. Free and efficient is the new cool, and for good reason.
Others are making building facades out of heavy-duty solar fabrics like those on the planned expansion of the Artists for Humanity Epicenter in Boston (below). See: One company’s mission to make every surface soak up the sun.
Is it any wonder that the Saudis have been frantically talking up oil prices daily, while they race to issue an IPO to offload a chunk of their reserves onto outside investors?
The Saudis seem to recognize what is happening here. Hopefully all the self-styled business geniuses running the US government today, will stop trying to block progress and get behind the smart energy boom too.
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