TWO vast and deep revolutions are sweeping the world and transforming our relationship with things that we otherwise take for granted. One is the revolution in power generation, where the proliferation of solar panels is rendering large-scale investments in grid-based infrastructure obsolete. That revolution is now set to undergo its first major evolution once batteries follow suit, first as electric vehicles and then for home use. The second major revolution is digital payments that are rendering the old world of cash obsolete.

Both revolutions bring enormous promise and can transform our world and lived experience in ways that we can barely imagine right now. Think back to the year 2000; mobile phones were beginning to become ubiquitous. Who could have imagined back then that one day you would be able to make payments through one of these devices? Yet here we are, using our banking apps to transfer money and make bill payments.

The telecommunications revolution transformed our world and lived experience in ways so profound it was difficult to imagine at the start. Something along the same lines is happening all over again in the world of electricity generation and digital payments.

The starting point for the solar power revolution was probably the presidency of Barack Obama, who made it a central plank of his campaign in 2008 to spur along the burgeoning revolution in renewable energy. They launched the famous ‘moonshot initiative’ in which reaching ‘grid parity’ in the price of a single unit of installed solar-generated electricity was the........

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