Energy Literacy 101 – Saul Griffith makes the connection between personal and public energy policies

Written by Lee H Goldberg September 25, 2009 Hits: 1207 Favorites

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If you have any difficulty making a connection between energy consumption and global climate change, it’s worth spending a little time watching one of Saul Griffith’s lively “Energy Literacy” presentations. Normally, I find these sorts of things rather tedious but somehow Griffiths makes this potentially mind-numbing topic more interesting than many of the stand-up comics I’ve seen.

Unlike the ramblings of wooly-headed academics or Al Gore’s self-righteous preaching, Griffith takes a pragmatic, geek’s-eye view of the situation – beginning with an unflinching analysis of his own energy consumption http://www.wattzon.com/wattizen/saul. The process of accounting for the energy involved in everything from the food he eats to the cars he drives becomes the foundation for his unique view of the challenges and opportunities we’ll face in transitioning to a carbon-neutral global economy.

One of the things I like best about Griffith’s is that he is not pushing any one approach or technology for delivering the 18 TW worth of power that the world currently consumes. He lays out all the options (solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, nuclear, tidal/hydro/wave power and biofuels) along with what percentage of the world’s energy needs each technology can meet. His talk also shows how various conservation strategies can be used to reduce the cost and time it will take to make the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. Although he makes the consequences of inaction quite clear, Griffith simply gives you the numbers that you can use to decide which combination of solutions will work best.

I just caught the latest version of his talk at an O’Reilly webcast http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/1411 I’m not sure if they will offer a rebroadcast but there is an excellent , although somewhat shorter version of this talk available at Wattzon.org http://blog.wattzon.com/2008/11/14/scarcity-and-abundance/. You can also catch some of Grffith’s other talks on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=saul+griffith+&search_type=&aq=f as he addresses topics as diverse as designing 100 mpg+ cars to using giant kites as wind generators.

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Written by :

Lee H Goldberg