Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy

Front Cover
Island Press, Aug 13, 2009 - Business & Economics - 387 pages
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy ignited America’s Apollo Project and sparked a revolution in space exploration. Today the New Apollo Energy Project is poised to revolutionize the production of energy and thereby save our planet. The nation that built the world’s most powerful rockets, its most advanced computers, and its most sophisticated life support systems is ready to create the world’s most powerful solar energy systems, its most advanced wind energy turbines, and its most sophisticated hybrid cars. This will result in nothing less than a second American Revolution. Who are the dreamers in California who believe they can use mirrors and liquid metal to wring more electricity from a ray of sunshine than anyone else on earth can?

Who are the innovators who have built a contraption that can turn the energy of a simple wave off the Oregon coast into burnt toast in Idaho? Who are the scientists in Massachusetts who have invented a battery that now runs your hand drill and will soon run your car? Readers will meet them all in this book. They will learn how the new energy economy will grow, the research that is required, and the legislation that must be passed to make the vision a reality.

This is a thoughtful, optimistic book, based on sound facts. No one before has tied together the concepts of economic growth and greenhouse gas reductions with such concrete examples. No one has previously told the real stories of the people who are right now on the front lines of the energy revolution. The co-authors, one a U.S. Congressman who is the primary sponsor of the New Apollo Energy Act, and the other the founder of the Apollo Alliance, have joined their experience, expertise, and passion for a clean energy future to lay out the path to stop global warming and gain energy independence.
 

Contents

A New Apollo Project for Energy
1
Reinventing the Car
36
Waking Up to the New Solar Dawn
66
Energy Efficiency The Distributed Power of Democracy
93
Reenergizing Our Communities One Project at a Time
113
Homegrown Energy
147
Sailing in a Sea of Energy
178
Can Coal or Nuclear Be Part of the Solution?
195
Whats It Going to Take?
227
An American Energy Policy
258
Placing Our Bets on a New Apollo Project
299
Epilogue
309
Acknowledgments
325
Notes
329
Index
359
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