So with conservation, aided by a renewable smart grid, even with a plugin hybrid you end up using around 30% of your present electric power.

With this lower power demand, distributed solar, wind, and biogas from waste would handle the load.

Water conservation has enormous possibilities too.  Composting toilets, air pressure/water spray dish, clothes, and people washing, and drain water recycling to be used in drip irrigation.  Could save 80% of water use.

I agree on cars though, ultra light hypercars and plugin bikes are the answer.  Safe plugin bikes with three wheels and clear plastic bubble wall crash/weather protection.   And lots more bike trails and lanes.

Under 1000 pound plugin hybrid hypercars made from carbon fiber will sip gas only after the plugin battery range is exhausted, 100 miles would be easy to attain in these much more efficient cars.  

This all might seem like techno majic, but all these systems already exist.  Just at a one off experimental stage for some, like the plugin hypercar, and at higher prices due to lack of mass production for many others.  Like the plugin bike.

Water gulping coal and nuclear power plants are obsolete and ought to be phased out over the next decade.

Put solar thermal on top of already established factories, many abandoned due to tax breaks for job outsourcing, and revive manufacturing with solar furnace power.  It doesn't need water.

Use the focused solar process heat for silicon refining and fabrication, for instance, a high heat energy intensive process that is in short supply and making solar PV artificially expensive.  Glass and metal recycling and fabrication can also use solar furnace power.

Then use the waste heat, trapped in the cooling products, to keep on generating electric power long after dark.  A closed cycle turbine using refrigerant like ammonia won't need water, especially if ground heat exchange is used to cool the turbine cycle.

That's distributed renewable energy applied to factories.  Wind can also be used in conjunction with solar at factory sites.

How about offshore floating wind/wave power platforms powering shipyards?  Shipyards that build floating wind/wave power platforms even?

Distributed renewable power is for factories, malls, stadiums, the pentagon...  power it up from the smallest installation, a campground composting toilet with a solar nightlight..  all the way up to the biggest mall in america.  Green power it all.

The Mall of America uses no heat even in Minnesota Winters.  It stores the heat from big greenhouse windows and people walking through daily, all night long.  So why isn't it supplying more than it's own electricity use with solar PV on that huge roof?

Because we misspent three trillion on bush corporatist boondoggle and oil war over the last eight years?   Instead of using that cash to pay down the debt and rebuild the economy with subsidies for renewables?

That's my guess.  The forward looking managment of facilities like the Mall of Anerica would jump at the chance to add to the bottomline by installing solar.  With a little bit of financial incentive, 10 cents per solar kwh generated for the grid?  Yep.