Markets and Innovation

How to Enable the Energy Revolution

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This weekend, I read what may be the most important book yet for those transforming today's grid into the Intelligent Grid, and transforming today's buildings and the systems inside them into Smart Buildings. No, it is not Thomas Friedman's "Hot Flat and Crowded", although that work has set the table nicely for discussions of the importance and opportunity of this effort. It is not and of the chap books from the Department of Energy, or the IEEE, or EPRI. It is not one of the many books on environmental eschatology. Nor is it any of George Gilder's visionary history books that bring perspective to technology.

I recommend that anyone involved in these efforts read "The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It"...

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Thomas Friedman and "The End of Green"

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In a recent blog post titled "The End of Green", Thomas Friedman ponders whether the current troubles in the financial markets will end investments in sustainable technology, particularly in energy. In his conclusion, he writes:

What we are seeing in this crisis is the need for a whole new financial architecture-and people are recognizing that some problems are just too big to solve unless we approach them systematically. As it is with our economy, so it is with our ecosystem: we need a new system, and we are going to have to think things through very carefully and make some hard choices to get it right.

Although Friedman describes the risks and the opportunities better than anyone, in this point I think while his aim is true, his target selection is off...

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Free markets are Live Markets

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The Wall Street Journal looked at Texas Energy price increases this year and got nearly everything wrong. The big changes in electrical prices in Texas this year mirror the price changes in all energy markets. It is unclear to me how people think that *any* industry, no matter how regulated, can repeal supply and demand for its primary supplies. Some are arguing that these price changes argue for extended market regulation. The regulated energy market is not the natural order; we have a regulated market structure only because nothing else made sense in 1908 when the current model was created in Chicago..
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She never wants an Electric Car

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My daughter explained to me yesterday why she never wants an electric car. She has been reading about Shai Agassi’s and Idan Ofer’s efforts to build an electric car while building up an electric car infrastructure. She resents the “Gillette” (or Polaroid) model: sell them the handle cheap and sell them blades forever. She does not want to be even more dependent upon the power grid. She also mistrusts giving a single player access to her driving information. Many of today’s twenty-somethings have deep doubts about our information society and its long-term stability. Cultural messengers from...
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