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Earlier this summer, a piloted fixed-wing aircraft called Solar Impulse completed the first-ever circumnavigation of the Earth using nothing but the power of the sun. The company behind it, ABB, is the world's largest builder of electricity grids, making most of its estimated $48.1 billion fortune from power and automation technology. Shortly after its aircraft triumphantly touched down in Abu Dhabi on July 26, I happened upon a PR piece, attributed to ABB's President and CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer. What struck me most about Spiesshofer's spiel was a paragraph describing the founding of ABB, 125 years ago, "by two enterprising entrepreneurs" who wanted "to explore the potential of a promising new technology called electricity". Wow, I thought. How far we have come! In a little over a century mankind has transformed the world, from one lit by candles and oil lamps where the fastest forms of travel were horseback and steamship, to the globalized, homogenized sphere of today, which would be unrecognizable to all who came before. And all of it started with electricity. But about 85 percent of the world's energy - by which, of course, we largely mean electricity - comes from sources that will eventually be depleted. That's not to mention the impact that our modern way of living has on the world's reserves of rare earth elements - those magic metals that are used in everything from smartphones to MRI machines, and even the batteries that powered Solar Impulse on its groundbreaking trip around the Earth. | 
