A few days ago I had the pleasure of chatting with a man who has seen (and read) it all when it comes to alternative energy. My host–who has quite the library of magazines and books going back four decades–worked in energy in the 1970's and is very alarmed that clean energy may never reach its potential.

Horst Ochmann, at 80 years young, is likely one of the the few folks who fought in World War II who spends more time reading online and off-line about sustainability than me. His office is full of printed- out online articles categorizing news about peak oil, solar thermal, and off-grid technologies from around the globe. He also showed me his concentrating solar "oven" that he bought in 1978.

A former energy executive -- he was the CEO in the 70's for the Brazilian operations of Brascan, a Canadian energy company, that is now Brookfield Asset Management.

When asked about when he started thinking about energy issues and the need for renewables, he jumped to attention. "It was in October of 1973, and I was watching TV in a bus station in Rio De Janeiro. I saw the outbreak of the Arab--Israeli war -- the first oil war."

Ochmann--as he is called by his friends--felt intensely that the world was going to face a new destiny based on the battle for energy as a resource. After the start of the war, he immediately joined the International Association of Hydrogen Energy and the International Solar Energy Association, and began to consume everything he could about energy alternatives.

During the years following the war and subsequent oil embargo, Ochmann, a native of Germany, tried to convince the shareholders of Brascan (which supplied 80 percent of the electricity to Brazil) that they should diversify their energy portfolio to include renewables. "I told them that there would be an energy crisis coming, but my efforts were useless.They were playing dumb."

He said people at that time who were embracing renewable energy were written off as romantics. After Brascan sold the utility business to the Brazilian government, the company reinvested the profits in mining companies and real estate, so he resigned.

When our talk shifted to the current global economic meltdown, Ochmann said he predicted in 1975 that the rampant consumerism and lack of attention to energy issues would one day cause "the monetary system to go to pieces." He believes that has happened now, and isn't hopeful for a recovery of the lost wealth anytime soon.

In addition to our financial woes, he expects peak oil and power, as extensively covered by a favorite resource, the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, to spur an energy crisis starting in 2011.

While Ochmann is a firm believer in renewable energy to mitigate our energy problems, he's afraid that the industries will suffer from a lack of resources that will prevent them from reaching the scale needed. He believes there won't be any money available for high-risk investments, such as new generations of solar, hydrogen and biofuel technologies -- or for further oil exploration.

Wind power, which is becoming cost-competitive, he sees as the exception.

We will have no choice but to shift to a simpler, more energy-efficient lifestyle, according to Ochmann. To prepare for the day of energy reckoning, Ochmann is selling his house in the city of Porto Alegre and moving to a town outside of Rio De Janeiro so that he can be self-sufficient. He is studying off-grid living and mini-farming so that if he must provide for himself, he can.

I don't think it will come to that, but he's not the only one who is preparing.

A final note: I was checking my facts about the Yom Kippur War before writing this and a city name struck me as oddly familiar: Eilat. It is a port city in Israel that was blocked to prevent oil from arriving. It is familiar because I was just invited to an international renewable energy conference there. Somehow it seems appropriate that one of the keys to the oil war is the home to a conference about freedom from oil.