From old steamboats to the mines of Appalachia, to World War II, to the oil crisis of 1973, coal has played an easily overlooked but surprisingly foundational role in building America and the world. Read More
Clean energy is one of the largest business opportunities in history. But, in 2011, the US venture capital industry lost over $10 billion betting on it. What led to this cleantech collapse? And what did we learn as funding for cleantech is on the rise again? Read More
This is the third and final part in my series exploring the events that shaped the electric industry as we know it. If you haven’t already done so, I recommend reading part one and part two first. As I mentioned in part one, the power industry was born from the inventions and investments of Thomas… Read More
This is the second in a three-part series on the origins of the modern power industry. Part 1 can be found at How Edison, Tesla, and other visionaries invented the modern grid. The sparks that started the AC/DC current wars By the late 1880s, Edison was on his way to dominating the rapidly growing power… Read More
Take a moment to imagine a world without electricity. You will quickly realize how dependent our 21st-century lives are on this invisible and silent form of energy. The modern electric grid was built from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s during one of greatest waves of invention in human history. The century-old power industry is… Read More
Thomas Edison famously told his good friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, “We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel, when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy—sun, wind, and tide. I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle… Read More
(Reading time: 4 minutes) Ask most experts and they’ll tell you that local energy systems like microgrids and community solar can be expensive and tough to build. If this is true, can local energy really be a faster path to cleaner energy? As with most things, the real answer is never simple. Local energy champions, like… Read More
Electricity powers nearly every aspect of our modern, convenient lives. It’s so pervasive and easy that most of us take it for granted. But just behind the common electric outlet lies a system that is expensive, insecure, and, worst of all, dangerously dirty – the grid. For example, clean energy from the sun and wind… Read More
