“Green Tech” the main trend for 2018

In 2017, clean power gathered unprecedented momentum. Multiple automakers launched entire families of EVs, including the most exciting one yet, Tesla’s Model 3. The company also started pre-orders for the Solar Roof, a type of home photovoltaic panel that will make solar panel installations less ugly.

With climate change problems mounting, national and local governments are pushing for more renewable energy and an end to fossil-fueled cars — despite hostile moves in those areas by US President Donald Trump. Elected officials and the public want fewer gas-powered vehicles and coal plants, and more EVs, solar panels and wind turbines. That will ultimately benefit your health, wallet and environment, and you’ll be less reliant on large energy and oil corporations, to boot.

With the expectations of consumers, companies and governments all getting higher, 2018 has a lot to deliver. There are key deadlines, especially on Tesla’s part, and if companies miss them, green buyers could go from exuberant to depressed. Here’s what to expect on the consumer side for EVs, clean home power, battery storage backup, and more.

A car-free day in Paris, which will be banning fossil-fuel vehicles by 2030. Getty Images.

President Trump opted America out of the Paris climate agreement, and he and many of the Republicans who control Congress have pushed coal and oil instead of clean energy. This is despite increasing concern in the scientific community that atmospheric CO2 levels are reaching the point of no return.

The rest of the world, however, is moving forward. France, for one, created the “Make our Planet Great Again” initiative as counter-programming to Trump. That nation and the UK will also ban fossil-fueled cars completely by 2040. That’s admittedly pretty far in the future, but France’s notoriously polluted capital, Paris, has declared that gas- and diesel-burning cars will be banned much sooner, starting in 2030.