Ten prominent clean energy analysts, researchers, and engineers have published a declaration in Carnegie Council's Policy Innovations online magazine calling for an 80 percent reduction in fossil fuel use over the next 20 years, offering their skills and laboratories to help realize this transformation.
Find the complete text here.
"The tragedy in the Gulf is a warning we cannot ignore," they write. "Business as usual courts irreversible ecological catastrophe, resource wars, failed states, and mass migration of the desperate that will affect all regions, all countries, all peoples."
Authored by Gregor Czisch of Transnational Renewables Consulting and Roy Morrison of Southern New Hampshire University, the declaration puts forth a blueprint for revolutionizing renewable power and efficiency.
- Renewable electrification: We must integrate and optimize decentralized renewable energy resources, linking them over long distances with energy storage on a continental scale.
- Improve efficiency: We must take advantage of thermodynamic efficiencies through cogeneration, district heating and cooling, and heat pumps.
- New market rules and regulations: We must adopt new policies such as proper utility and manufacturer incentives for efficiency and distributed generation, feed-in tariffs, high renewable portfolio standards, and varied opportunities for investment.
"The impetus behind this commitment to a clean future comes at an important time," said Evan O'Neil, managing editor of Policy Innovations. "Climate readings continue to show record heat and a warming planet, and the toxic spill in the Gulf of Mexico makes it obvious that fossil fuels are not compatible with global health, prosperity, and security."
Signatories to the Declaration in Support of an Efficient Renewable Energy Future include:
Dave Andrews, Claverton Energy Research Group (signing in a personal capacity)
Godfrey Boyle, Energy & Environment Research Unit, Open University
Gregor Czisch, Transnational Renewables Consulting
Mark Delucchi, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis
Mark Z. Jacobson, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University
Nick Jenkins, Institute of Energy, Cardiff University
Daniel Kammen, Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley
Roy Morrison, Office for Sustainability, Southern New Hampshire University
Andrew Smith, London Analytics Ltd
Candida Spillard, Waterman Sustainable Energy