The inventory and assessment of a geosite in a territory provides a sound basis for the protection and use of its geological heritage. This article aims to evaluate the most relevant geosites in the province of Chimborazo (Ecuador), applying the Spanish Inventory of Sites of Geological Interest (IELIG, in Spanish) method, and proposing alternatives for geotourism development in the studied area. The methodological process was based on: (i) the inventory and preliminary selection of geosites; (ii) a semi-quantitative geosite assessment and proposal of travel itineraries for geotourism; and (iii) the application of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) matrix to establish geotourism development strategies within a framework of sustainability. The global assessment of scientific, tourist, and academic interests demonstrates that 25% of the 20 evaluated geosites have very high interest and 75% have high interest. The top three geosites with the highest degrees of interest are the Chimborazo Volcano, known as ‘Earth’s Closest Point to the Sun’, the Pallatanga geological fault, and the geosite named Comunidad Cacha. The SWOT analysis reveals that travel itineraries that combine cultural heritage elements and geosites could offer a real alternative for the region’s sustainable development through geotourism.

A portfolio of new energy technologies has emerged in the first decade of the 21st Century, and many of them could be used for re-structuring the energy sector towards Sustainable Development. A key subject in this quest is the future of automobile, with possibilities on powering ranging from biofuels to Hydrogen Cars (HC), to Electric Vehicles (EV). In turn, the latter is closely connected with the need to deploy Renewable Energies (RE) for electricity generation. Within such new situation, countries and governments are aware that there are new tools for fighting Global Warming (GW), and new policies could be established for winning this battle against CO₂. All these initiatives will affect the future of energy corporations, notably hydrocarbon companies; and it should be noted that it will be difficult for the companies to define long-term strategies if energy policies convey upheavals, sudden changes in promoting alternatives and interruptions on activities. Hence, it is very important to adopt energy policies allowing a smooth evolution of the companies’ activities to the new energy model. After analyzing the alternatives with a forecasting-backcasting methodology, an “eclectic approach” is proposed, with the Plug-in Hybrid car with Flexible Fuel (PiHFF) as the central paradigm in the coming promoting policies.