Johannesburg — THE next major global industry, and one that will bring economic and social success to the country that develops it, will be the quest for a cheap, clean and sustainable source of energy.

The innovation would solve major problems affecting the world today, including spiraling fuel costs, a lack of electricity in developing nations, climate change and the extinction of some species of plants and wildlife.

That is the picture painted by Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist and author of the best-selling economics book The World is Flat. Addressing business leaders at an event hosted by the University of the Free State's school of management and the Altron group, Friedman said last week that energy technology would be the next global industry.

It was impossible to predict which country would lead the way but it would not be Africa, unless the people were given access to electricity and broadband technology so they could participate properly in the world economy, he said.

Global connectivity and outsourcing meant any service or product could be supplied from almost anywhere. Yet not everybody could come up with the spark of imagination and creativity that inspired those services. "It's all about nurturing imagination. There will be high imagination countries and low imagination countries," Friedman said.

"People say China is the next dominant country, but never cede the century to a country which censors Google. That's limiting the imagination of your people."

At the current rate of global warming and population growth, humans "are going to burn up, choke up, smoke up, heat up and eat up this planet so fast", he said.

The population would rise by a billion in the next 13 years, and the North Pole ice cap may melt completely in the summer of 2015.

Whichever country, company or university came up with a source of cheap, clean and reliable electrons would have the means to end oil dictatorships, climate change and the lack of energy in third world nations. "That tells me that the next great industry will be the search for energy technology."

Developing a clean and renewable fuel source was a job for engineers, not bureaucrats, Friedman said, but it would need political pressure to be a success.

Unless governments put a fuel tax on oil and petrol there would be little incentive for people to switch to a new fuel source.

Governments must also subsidise its development or its selling price until it gained the economies of scale that led to a gradual drop in the price of new technologies.

So far the political will was lacking, as environmental protection involved one generation acting now to protect the interests of the next generation, he said.