Maybe I'm more optimistic because I live in Europe :-P. I'm pretty sure most energy intensive industry is already on flexible pricing. And privately, if you bui

Maybe I'm more optimistic because I live in Europe :-P. I'm pretty sure most energy intensive industry is already on flexible pricing. And privately, if you build a new home or change anything about your meter, you're already mandated to install a smart meter. But households' energy use has been slowly going down anyway, due to energy saving appliances and lights, education, and better insulation (the latter doesn't help much with electricity, but with total power consumption). As the sibling post said, the transition will be difficult. But there is absolutely no way the government will allow widespread brownouts or industrial collapse (in the worst case we'll use just enough fossil as necessary). We are talking about reduced profit margins for a couple of years, and having to wait a bit more longer to buy shiny new gadgets. The real challenge is to orchestrate everything so that it is socially fair and the weakest, or those most dependent on cars, etc. don't get hit too hard.