Sustainability: Let the Market Choose

As Heinlein said, "Don't appeal to your rival's better nature- he may not have one. Appeal to his bottom line instead."

My company is currently working on a "green" biomass fueled locomotive. If we can't beat the genset diesels and hybrids on total cost per horsepower-hour, we won't build it. And rather than go "high tech" we are using the KISS principle to make the whole unit robust, reliable and easy to service. Our goal is a product that will beat the competition in every category- and by the way, it just happens to use cheap, renewable, safe fuel.

In this economy, we also need to keep the price as low as we can and still earn back our cost of capital plus enough to grow the business. If we can't beat the competition on price, then as the article says, we're not going to sell very many. Even if we show a positive ROE over a 20 year life, the customer might not have the up-front capital to buy a unit with a higher capital cost in order to get a cheaper operating cost.