Reading about new breakthroughs in technology always make me feel warm inside, 15-20% energy efficiency for solar panels has never been that great but this may one day help.
Sustainable living and renewable energy sources are a large part of any student engineers curriculum nowadays, for years engineers and businessmen in positions of responsibility have known sustainability is something that has to be included into a design.
So if you're not involved I wouldn't worry, there are plenty of awesome people with the tools to take care of it. It would certainly help things along though if the masses were a little bit more open minded to change.