What a concept: "living within one's means"...that's the definition of sustainability that I prefer.

RenewableEnergyWorld.com

Shifting from the Economics of Obesity to Sustainable Energy
The Potential for Clean Energy, Low-Carbon Gains through a 'Sustainable Energy Utility.'

A growing number of communities are developing comprehensive energy approaches that promise fundamental lifestyle changes similar to what we witnessed with information. These experiments include a “net zero energy” buildingscape (Austin, Texas), carless transport during certain hours (London), low/no-carbon communication (Google’s green data network) and industrial ecology-based manufacturing (Kalundbord, Denmark). All of these initiatives represent efforts to boldly craft 21st-century answers to the new era’s economic and social needs that go beyond the carbon accounting model hotly debated for 15 years. Indeed, these options seek to remove the problem rather than waste time counting molecules.

Unleashing the social and market forces that are needed to achieve a real transition to sustainability will require new institutions. The Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU) is just such an institution and was recently mandated by law in Delaware. Also by law, the state of Delaware is now required to reduce in-state energy use from all fuels by 30% before 2017 and source 20% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The SEU does not spend time penalizing failure to switch to clean energy; instead, it marshals capital and policy to reward and support those communities and businesses willing to build an entirely new future.

Just What Is a Sustainable Energy Utility, and Why Do We Need It?

Designed as an independent, non-profit, and financially self-sufficient entity, the SEU delivers energy efficiency, conservation and distributed renewable energy to everyone. Its distinction lies in its potential to help overcome the formidable disincentives to investing in sustainable energy, such as the misalignment between the utility provider’s and customer’s returns on investment and the government rules that create risks for the future value of investments. The SEU seeks to capitalize on the fact that with sustainable energy the individual benefits may be small in isolation, but they are massive in aggregate.