Agile Energy Systems: Global Lessons from the California Energy Crisis Woodrow W. Clark, II, Senior Fellow, Milken Institute, and Ted K. Bradshaw, Professor, Human and Community Development Department, University of California, Davis October 6, 2004 Woodrow Clark, left, and Ted Bradshaw discuss their concept of a "new energy paradigm" focused on renewable, clean technologies.

Thanks not only to public-private partnerships pushing the move toward "green" energy supplies, but also to some forward-looking multinational corporations like General Electric, this shift is taking place across the globe, they said.

"We're in the middle of a paradigm change," said Clark, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute.

Clark and Bradshaw discussed their new book, Agile Energy Systems, Global Lessons from the California Energy Crisis, which offers a new approach to energy reliability and efficiency.

Rather than the deregulation model, which has cost California some $40 billion, or a fully regulated energy system, the authors argue for one that is market-driven, but with a strong dose of government help and regulation.

This system, they say, involves a much higher reliance on clean energies, like wind, sun and hydrogen, as well as hybrids of these and carbon-based fuels.

"The deregulation model did not work and will not work," said Bradshaw, a professor at the University of California, Davis. "Deregulation was a bad idea."

The key points of an "agile" energy system are:

• Diversified technologies
  
• Distributed production
  
• Renewable and clean natural energy sources
  
• Interdependent (hybrid) and interchangeable
  
• Quickly developable and promotes small businesses
  
• Enhance the public good
  
• Reliable and cost controlled

To avoid electricity blackouts in the future, governments and companies must work together to build on a diversified sources of clean energy supplies.

"Clean, renewable energies are the future," said Clark.

Read more about Agile Energy Systems, Global Lessons from the California Energy Crisis.

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