Peter Fox-Penner - Power after Carbon

After Smart Power (SP) was published in 2010, I spent the next few years pretending that writing more books about electric power was no longer my destiny. I was encouraged to see the debate over whether the electric industry needed fundamental change settled much more quickly and decisively than I feared when I wrote SP. Utility managements, outside stakeholders, and most importantly industry regulators seemed to embrace the idea; writings, conferences, and regulatory activity on the utility of the future seemed to be sprouting everywhere. We were now into tactics and execution: how-to manuals for industry specialists, not conceptual arguments that might be interesting to both generalists and insiders.

Yet, I gradually became nagged by the notion that the important policy issues were changing. One review of SP on Amazon began by saying, its now a little bit dated, but Once I began noodling on what an update would look like, I quickly realized that I had far underestimated how much the frame had shifted. Climate change had become the industrys (and one of civilizations) most urgent public policy challenges, and electrification had become a critical pathway to decarbonization. The latter made the sheer pace of industry expansion, simultaneous with a massive shift in generation resources and industry structure, a global imperative. Speed to the ball and sound execution were now paramount.

Rather than becoming an SP update, this book became a more current, wider, and sometimes deeper companion piece. If SP is the text for Future Utilities 100, I hope that Power after Carbon supports the next course in the sequence. I have tried to make it nearly as accessible to non-specialists as SP has proven to be, and I hope it sparks an even greater pace of constructive change.

From Facebook posts to refereed academic papers, transparency regarding sources and support is becoming recognized as an essential ethical dimension of any published work. Toward that end, I close by noting that during the time I wrote this book at the Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, the Institute was supported by the Hewlett Foundation, the Energy Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, among others. The book itself did not receive any direct support from any funder. In addition, I am fortunate to serve as Chief Strategy Officer at Energy Impact Partners, which invests in many clean technology companies (listed at www.energyimpactpartners.com) and where I hold an equity interest. I also hold a small equity-like interest in, and serve as academic advisor to, the Brattle Group, as well as options in EOS Energy Storage.

I am grateful for another chance to contribute to the electricity industrys transition, and to all the people and organizations listed in the Acknowledgments. All errors, of fact and judgment, are my own.