Monday, March 26, 2007

Global fight for climate change

The key to fighting climate change is for the U.S. to take a leadership role in promoting a “new world wide web of electricity,” according to Michael Powers, board member and spokesman for Global Energy Network Institute, a non-profit research and education group based in San Diego.

Powers made the comments at Stanford University’s recent conference, “Energy in the Developing World: Working toward a Sustainable Future,” held on March 3, 2007. The conference was organized by the Stanford Association for International Development (SAID) and the Graduate School of Business.

“By connecting regional electricity grids around the world into a global network, it will be possible to tap new renewable resources and phase out our worst polluting coal-fired power plants,” Powers said....

Closer to home, the California Solar Initiative (CSI) plans to bring thousands of new solar energy systems online during the next 10 years and each of these systems represents a “new node on the global network,” Powers said. “We are creating a new market segment of ‘pro-sumers’ – energy producers during the daytime and consumers at night,” he said, He argues that this will launch a whole new industry of to supply equipment and software for managing this energy and tracking renewable energy transactions.

“Imagine an energy version of ‘Napster,’” Powers said. “We’re talking about peer-to-peer energy trading... where a solar homeowner in San Jose can capture kilowatts from the sun – and sell them to a homeowner in Shanghai – instantaneously. That’s the future.”

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's a fascinating concept. Hopefully it comes to fruition.

Dagny
www.onnotextiles.com
bamboo clothing

missydeaton said...

Very,very cool :)

MissyDeaton said...

This is really good stuff,doc!