The biggest barrier to innovation is sometimes the fact that it’s cheap enough to do things the old way. Why develop new foods when the old ones are popular? Why create new cars when existing ones fit everyone’s needs?

That rationale is particularly true at the moment for energy, and especially gasoline. As environmental groups call for cleaner and more sustainable ways to produce energy, the inconvenient fact is that fossil fuel is cheap. Natural gas continues to be found in great abundance. And for much of 2014, as a result of booming supply and advanced technology to drill in more remote places, oil prices have cratered, reaching their lowest point in more than four years. Inexpensive gas eliminates the incentive to create