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David Crane, president and CEO of NRG Energy, is not your typical power company executive, as becomes clear when he calls climate change a “slow-moving catastrophe” and “the fundamental issue of our day.”

In an interview with Yale Environment 360 senior editor Fen Montaigne, Crane said he believes the U.S. electricity-generating market is on the verge of a profound transformation, not unlike the era two decades ago when the antiquated world of land-line telephones and “Ma Bell” companies was about to give way to cell phones and mobile communications.

The electricity future, says Crane, will be transformed by the widespread adoption of three innovations: solar panels on residential and commercial roofs, electric cars in garages, and truly “smart meters” that will seamlessly transfer power to and from homes, electric vehicles, and the grid.

His long-term goal? To see the U.S. transportation sector kick the habit of imported oil and run on electricity generated primarily from renewable sources, especially solar power…..

Crane:I think the most important thing is to make the American public aware that now they have energy choices in a way that they never really did. You don’t just have to settle for using electricity in your house that is supplied by coal-fired power plants on the grid. And you don’t just have to put oil that comes from the Middle East in your gas tank. You can buy an

By far the biggest opportunity for those of us on the electricity side is transportation energy.”

electric car. You can put solar panels on your roof. You have choices now. ….

looking forward, electric vehicles will be far cheaper to operate than internal combustion engine vehicles. And solar panels on the roof will provide power more cheaply than taking power from the grid….

 The explosive-growth part will be between distributed solar power, which is like 1 to 10 megawatt size, and then residential, which is measured in kilowatts. We have so many parking lots and warehouse rooftops and residential locations where people want to reduce their monthly electric bills and that is just an enormous area of growth.

e360: Tell me about your discussions with the New York Giants [football team] and the potential for these stadium parking lots and other similar large-scale parking lots in terms of putting up solar panels.

Crane: The one that we’ve actually done is the Washington Redskins. The Giants one is still under discussion. We want to make Americans aware that they have these choices. So we were looking for highly visible, respected parts of the community where we could put these solar panels. We are reluctant to see solar panels consume a lot of arable land. So when you’re looking here in the more space-constrained northeast of the United States, two things really jump out; very large parking lots and warehouse rooftops. Some of the largest parking lots on the east coast are around football stadiums. So we worked with the Redskins and we put on these solar pavilions in one parking lot at their stadium, just one of maybe 10 or 12 parking lots. We covered something like 800 parking spaces, and we’re are going to make enough power, 2 megawatts, to basically provide all of the electricity needs of the stadium on non-game days……