He stresses that financing, generation and distribution must all be improved in sync for a successful transition to occur. This is based on his experience in Europe helping them transition to distributed renewable energy.
It's funny you mention that - that book has been making its way around at work, and I've got it sitting on my desk to read right now.
I think the author is right on, though I bet we'll see some significant incremental progress in the next couple years. I also think, based on the blurbs I've seen, that he's missing out on one key part of the equation that a lot of non-energy startups can go after - intelligence in the system. We'll be building the distribution, storage and generation side, and the smart grid will continue to plug into more and more devices, but it's the smarts of the system at scale, doing things like we've all been working on in the social space for a few years now, that will take those raw materials to the next level, and do something really clever that none of us have thought about yet.
For me, the biggest surprise in the interview was the reaction of the legacy energy companies. At first, they were very unhappy with the idea of independent, distributed generation (no surprise). But once it became clear that A) It's happening with or without them. And B) There's a new role for them in distribution intelligence. They got on board and now are actually pushing progress forward.
Comments
I really appreciated this interview http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail5059.html with the guy who wrote the book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Industrial_Revolution
He stresses that financing, generation and distribution must all be improved in sync for a successful transition to occur. This is based on his experience in Europe helping them transition to distributed renewable energy.
It's funny you mention that - that book has been making its way around at work, and I've got it sitting on my desk to read right now.
I think the author is right on, though I bet we'll see some significant incremental progress in the next couple years. I also think, based on the blurbs I've seen, that he's missing out on one key part of the equation that a lot of non-energy startups can go after - intelligence in the system. We'll be building the distribution, storage and generation side, and the smart grid will continue to plug into more and more devices, but it's the smarts of the system at scale, doing things like we've all been working on in the social space for a few years now, that will take those raw materials to the next level, and do something really clever that none of us have thought about yet.
For me, the biggest surprise in the interview was the reaction of the legacy energy companies. At first, they were very unhappy with the idea of independent, distributed generation (no surprise). But once it became clear that A) It's happening with or without them. And B) There's a new role for them in distribution intelligence. They got on board and now are actually pushing progress forward.