Building U.S. Energy Resilience

Post Carbon Institute Renewable Energy Fellow David Fridley discusses global renewable energy technology development and what may be a “pipe dream” of energy independence. Fridley also discusses the distinction between efficiency and conservation.

His new report, “Nine Challenges of Alternative Energy,” covers some of the most overlooked obstacles in the widespread deployment of alternative energies around the world, which, he says, energy developers and legislators must consider. These nine challenges are:

–Scalability and timing
–Commercialization
–Substitutability
–Material requirements
–Intermittency
–Energy density
–Water
–The law of receding horizons
–Energy returned on energy invested