With global instability and growing demand sending oil prices soaring to more than $50 a barrel, the future of energy has become a major policy issue for leaders around the world. The question is, how can they prepare for a post-fossil fuel era?
In a new book, Agile Energy Systems, Global Lessons from the California Energy Crisis, authors Woodrow W. Clark II, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, and Ted K. Bradshaw, a professor at the University of California, Davis, offer a roadmap to that future — one that focuses on renewable energy like wind, sun and water along with combinations of technologies that include the use of hydrogen. The key to this new "paradigm," Clark and Bradshaw say, is to diversify fuel sources.
Using the California electricity crisis of 2000-2001 as the prime example of an energy supply system gone wrong, the authors provide not only a litany of reasons why the current deregulated system isn′t working, but why an "agile energy system" — one that replaces the old vertically integrated regulated utility with one based on renewable energy generation and hybrid or combined technologies — will supply us with a constant, efficient supply of energy while reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.
"This book is a promissory note for a global clean energy future," says Jeremy Rifkin, founder and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends. "It defines what the practical world of energy is today and can be in the future."
Agile Energy Systems, part of publisher Elservier′s Global Energy Policy and Economics Series, is divided into three sections. Part one describes the five precipitating factors that led to the deregulation debacle in California: 1) major technological changes and commercialization, 2) regulatory needs mismatched to societal adjustments, 3) inadequate and flawed economic models, 4) lack of vision, goals and planning leading to energy failures, and 5) failure and lack of economic regional development. Part two examines how "civic markets," new economic models and planning for complexity as sustainable economic development can create an agile energy system within California. Part three examines the emerging "clean" hydrogen technology and its importance to the future of energy systems.
Praise for the book
"This book accomplishes what the energy community sorely needs — an evaluation of the California energy crisis not as an exercise in casting blame, but in an effort to learn valuable lessons for the future."
-- Daniel Kammen, Director, Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory; Professor, University of California, Berkeley
"An excellent book on a very important subject. The lessons from the Californian energy crisis are relevant for many countries around the world, and these lessons are very well described by Dr. Clark and Dr. Bradshaw."
-- Henrik Lund, Associate Professor, Department of Planning and Development, Aalborg University, Denmark
Contents
Part I: Roots of the Crisis
The Deregulation Tragedy: When Theory meets the Real World
Complex Energy Systems: The Limits of Knowledge, Management, and Planning
Economic Development and the Energy Crisis
Part II: Progress toward an Agile Energy Crisis
Advanced Technologies for an Agile Energy System
Civic Capitalism: A new Approach for Public and Private Collaboration
Economic Benefits of Agile Energy Systems
Part III: Roadmap to the Future
The Hydrogen Freeway: The Road Ahead
Authors
Woodrow W. Clark II is a senior fellow at the Milken Institute and managing director of Clark Communications LLC. He was the senior policy advisor (2000-2003), energy reliability, to California Gov. Gray Davis, where he was responsible for renewable energy, finance and emerging technologies, such as hydrogen. He is an international visiting professor in Denmark, Italy and China, and an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Pepperdine University in Malibu.
Ted K. Bradshaw, who teaches and lectures internationally, is a professor in the Human and Community Development Department at the University of California, Davis.
Review copies
If you would like a copy of the book to review, please contact Margo Leach, Marketing Coordinator, MS&E, at Elsevier, Ltd., Kidlington, Oxon, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom; E-mail: [email protected].