With the expectations of consumers, companies and governments all getting higher, 2018 has a lot to deliver. There are key deadlines, especially on Tesla's part, and if companies miss them, green buyers could go from exuberant to depressed. Here's what to expect on the consumer side for EVs, clean home power, battery storage backup, and more.

Politics is changing how you'll drive and live

A car-free day in Paris, which will be banning fossil-fuel vehicles by 2030. Getty Images.

President Trump opted America out of the Paris climate agreement, and he and many of the Republicans who control Congress have pushed coal and oil instead of clean energy. This is despite increasing concern in the scientific community that atmospheric CO2 levels are reaching the point of no return.

The rest of the world, however, is moving forward. France, for one, created the "Make our Planet Great Again" initiative as counter-programming to Trump. That nation and the UK will also ban fossil-fueled cars completely by 2040. That's admittedly pretty far in the future, but France's notoriously polluted capital, Paris, has declared that gas- and diesel-burning cars will be banned much sooner, starting in 2030.

Elsewhere, China installed a record number of wind and solar energy projects in 2017 to curb its own smog issues, and has even bigger plans for 2018 and beyond. The nation wants 20 percent of its power to come from solar or wind by 2030, and to invest around $560 billion by 2020, creating 13 million jobs in the process. As China is now the world's biggest polluter, this will not only mitigate global CO2 levels, but make green tech cheaper around the world.

These governmental actions aren't just bluster -- they're already having a potential impact on your life. Many of the big car brands, including Mercedes, Honda, GM and Volkswagen, sell cars worldwide, and a lot of countries are forcing manufacturers to produce more efficient vehicles. That will have a big impact on how vehicles are built and sold in the US, regardless of who's in power.

In 2018, then, you'll have more choice than ever for green transportation as plug-in-hybrid choices expand and EVs become ever more mainstream. Whereas before Tesla was the only game in town for long-range electric transport (read: more than 150 miles), you can now choose a Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf or, if you're in Europe, a Renault Zoe. Next year there will be even more choices as cars like the VW e-Golf and the Jaguar i-Pace arrive. More on those in a moment.

Meanwhile, home solar panels are getting cheaper as the technology gets incrementally better each year, pushed by the manufacture of gigawatt-size installations around the world. At the same time, the prices for home battery packs to back up said panels are also falling as they're being manufactured on a large scale for both EVs and power backup systems like the one Tesla just finished in Australia.

What that means for you is that solar panel installations for your roof have dropped nearly a quarter in price over the past few years, and batteries are becoming a realistic option for more folks.

However, politics could again hamstring progress. The FTC may introduce new tariffs on Chinese solar panel imports, effectively raising prices across the industry. At the same time, the government is weighing whether to get rid of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit (at the moment, it looks safe), which would have a devastating impact on sales next year and beyond.

Electric, hydrogen and hybrid vehicles