[/amazon_link]Author Peter Fox-Penner’s Smart Power provides much needed context for discussion on meeting the nation and the world’s energy needs. While its target audience is undoubtedly professionals grappling with energy resources and regulations, this look beyond the mechanics of energy production and distribution to the bigger picture of the energy eco-system, how it came to be, where it’s headed and where it needs to wind up, offers insights that anyone interested in life on or off the grid needs to understand.
- Who created the energy structure we live with today? (Thomas Insull, one of Edison’s personal staff, who became CEO of Commonwealth Edison and architect of the aggregate energy system)
- What alternative/sustainable energy options do we have, and how do they integrate with each other? (Wind at night, solar when it’s light, riding the tides…and more)
- Getting from point A to point B (Does clean energy mean the loss of the wilderness to power lines?)
- How do you manage to create massive new sources of energy in the face of a static (or shrinking) energy economy.
- What are the roles of regulation and the market, and what are their limits?
As the author says in his conclusion:
“A larger electric power industry is not longer automatically the route to a greater productivity and a better standard of living. in the coming century the power industry we seek is not necessarily the lartest, it is one that can help its customers achieve the highest level of service possible consistent with social and environmental sustainably. Its goal is not more, but more from less.”
Amazon Product Description: A new national policy on climate change is under debate in the United States and is likely to result in a cap on greenhouse gas emissions for utilities. This and other developments will prompt utilities to undergo the largest changes in their history. Smart Power examines the many facets of this unprecedented transformation.
This enlightening book begins with a look back on the deregulatory efforts of the 1990s and their gradual replacement by concerns over climate change, promoting new technologies, and developing stable prices and supplies. In thorough but non-technical terms it explains the revolutionary changes that the Smart Grid is bringing to utility operations. It also examines the options for low-carbon emissions along with the real-world challenges the industry and its regulators must face as the industry retools and finances its new sources and systems.
Throughout the book, Peter Fox-Penner provides insights into the policy choices and regulatory reform needed to face these challenges. He not only weighs the costs and benefits of every option, but presents interviews with informed experts, including economists, utility CEOs, and engineers. He gives a brief history of the development of the current utility business model and examines possible new business models that are focused on energy efficiency.
Smart Power explains every aspect of the coming energy revolution for utilities in lively prose that will captivate even the most techno-phobic readers.