Switching to Solar: What We Can Learn from Germany's Success in Harnessing Clean Energy - Softcover

Johnstone, Bob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1616142227 ISBN 13: 9781616142223

Publisher: Prometheus, 2010

Synopsis

In this inspiring and optimistic story of a green revolution in the making, a veteran science and technology journalist shows how the unrelenting efforts of a small band of grassroots activists have discovered ways to make solar a practical retail energy solution. The crucial driver for the adoption of solar energy has not been technology but policy. Focusing on initiatives in Germany, he describes the use of the "feed-in tariff" as the most successful policy mechanism yet invented to spur on widespread deployment of solar energy. Turning to California, the author reviews the efforts of policy wonks to create new schemes to make solar affordable at the municipal level. Pioneers in both tree-hugging Berkeley and golf-playing Palm Desert have united in common cause, and other towns and cities are planning to follow suit. As with other emerging trends, as California goes so goes the rest of the country. Concluding with a positive view of the future, the author describes the creativity of many startups fueled by venture capital. Innovation is being applied to every part of the process, from silicon production to financing and installation. The details may still be uncertain, but there's no doubt that the solar revolution is underway.

About this title

About the Author

Bob Johnstone (Melbourne, Australia) is the author of Brilliant!: Shuji Nakamura and the Revolution in Lighting Technology; We Were Burning: Japanese Entrepreneurs and the Forging of the Electronic Age; and Never Mind the Laptops: Kids, Computers, and the Transformation of Learning. He has also contributed numerous articles on technology to Forbes, Nature, New Scientist, MIT Technology Review, Wired, and the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Review

"Progress on the climate and energy front will require doing everything better—more sensible transport, more efficient factories and homes, cleaner forms of today's 'dirty' energy sources, and much fuller use of inexhaustible energy from the sun. Bob Johnstone has the technical background, the reportorial curiosity and energy, and the descriptive skill to explain just how much is possible on this front, based on his reports from Germany, California, China, and elsewhere. Anyone who cares about the world's energy future will benefit from reading this book." --James Fallows, national correspondent for the Atlantic, author, and former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter

"Bob Johnstone is surely right about the future importance of solar power, and he explores its prospects and potential in a compelling, accessible, and appealingly positive way. This book deserves to be widely read." --Bill Emmott, International author and writer, former editor of The Economist

"Bob Johnstone's book Switching to Solar is an extremely well-researched and well-written work guiding the reader from Becquerel's invention in 1839, Einstein's Nobel Prize in 1921, Chapin's discovery at Bell Labs in 1953, through 1973 when people started to learn how to spell photovoltaic, to today, when the market capitalization of one
of the solar company's listed on the US stock market is more than twice the market capitalization of the oil company Sunoco." --Dr. Peter F. Varadi Cofounder of Solarex Corporation and 2004 recipient of the European PV lndustry Association's Bonda Prize

Edition details

• Publisher: Prometheus
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1616142227
• ISBN 13: 9781616142223
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 402