When you take energy from the wind and the sun, it becomes precious. If the wind blows, your meter goes up, there are more volts in the battery, and the last thing you want to do is waste it. Light switches are anonymous - you don't see the coal being used up and the oil burning. What makes most people happy about wind energy is that it can be made from a moving piece of art in a landscape. It helps dispel the myths that windmills are noisy, ugly, ruin the landscape and force down house prices.

The preferable outcome is that we can still flick switches and have light, but we use lights more meaningfully and allow ourselves to sit around in the dark. There's a lovely quality to light as the sun goes down. That transition from light to dark has been part of us and of life for a long time.

In 20 years, will we be looking back at a golden age? 'Were you around in that time when we could turn on lights any time?' Fossil fuel is so dense because it's a product of millions of years. But the party's coming to an end and I'm not unhappy about it. There is an upside to letting that way of life end. Days of jetting around the world are coming to an end.

I'm happy knowing that there's a beautiful solution to how to produce energy, and it's there, rotating with no smoke or noise. Change doesn't have to be about sacrifice. The future can be a barrel-load of fun.