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In a world where it has become increasingly difficult to find things people have in common, here’s one: We all need energy. Indeed, we need a staggering amount of it – and in the future we’re going to need more. According to the Energy Information Administration, the arm of the government  that tracks energy use and makes estimates for the future, the worldwide demand for energy is expected to grow by 57% between 2004 and 2030. The way things stand now – with just 2% of energy coming from renewable, environmentally friendly sources – that’s going to mean a lot of fossil-fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, and, as oil flirts with record prices (it topped $99 per barrel in November), a whole lot of money. What we need, clearly, is an alternative future, and what’s going to get us there is alternative energy.

Of course, we’ve heard that story before. We heard it during the first oil crisis in 1973 and the second in 1979, when the search was on for new forms of energy; investments and publicity flowed, particularly into solar power. But when oil prices dropped, so did the push for alternatives. Indeed, more than a quarter of a century later, we still depend on fossil fuels – oil, coal, and natural gas – for the vast majority of our energy needs. In 2006, the U.S. consumed nearly 85 quadrillion BTUs of energy from fossil fuels, according to the EIA, compared with just 6.8 quadrillion from all renewable sources combined. The technologies that promised to save the day, it turned out, needed help themselves.

Progress was stalled on seemingly every front. Solar power -  a bountiful source of energy considering that the sun provides 6,000 times the power we need at any given moment – wasn’t cost-effective; the photovoltaic cells that converted light to energy were too expensive to make more than a dent in our energy use (and even for that, tax incentives and rebates were usually necessary). Geothermal power, energy coming from heat stored beneath the earth’s surface, has been mostly limited to sites in the western U.S. Hydroelectric power plants, which account for the bulk of renewable energy we use, were difficult and time-consuming to build, with most of the best sites in the U.S. already developed. Worse, in the last couple of years, researchers have argued that in certain cases, where forests were not cleared prior to a reservoir’s construction and decomposing plant life was creating methane, greenhouse gas emissions were actually higher than at fossil-fuel power plants.

Given the track record, here’s the surprise: Things are looking up – dramatically. It’s not that we’ve found a single source of energy that does it all. Instead we’re developing new technologies, and new tools, that are turbocharging a wide range of energy solutions. They’re giving us newer, more cost-effective ways to tap solar power; they’re enabling cleaner diesels and better ways to produce biofuels. They’re letting us do more, and travel further, while decreasing emissions.

And it’s not just the technologies that are evolving; it’s the business of alternative energy, too. The companies and investors that are embracing this field know that there’s no magic bullet for the world’s energy challenge. Instead, we’re going to need a portfolio of power: technologies and research that take many different pathways. It may look like we’re hedging our bets, but what we’re really doing is opening many doors to a brighter, cleaner, and plentiful energy future.

So why is alternative energy taking off now? There are a couple of reasons. First, there’s a growing concern – not just on the part of individuals, but companies, too – about climate change, primarily the global warming that, left unchecked, can lead to species extinction, extreme weather.

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