Corporate media parrot industry PR that renewable technologies just aren't ready for prime time. But Sovacool marshals extensive field research to show that the only barrier blocking the conversion of a significant proportion of the U.S. energy portfolio to renewables is not technological—the technology is there—but institutional. Public utility commissioners, utility managers, system operators, business owners, and ordinary consumers are hobbled by organizational conservatism, technical incompatibility, legal inertia, weak and inconsistent political incentives, ill-founded prejudices, and apathy. The author argues that significant conversion to technologically proven clean energy systems can happen only if we adopt and implement a whole new set of policies that will target and dismantle the insidious social barriers that are presently blocking decisions that would so obviously benefit society.
Benjamin K. Sovacool is Research Fellow in the Energy Governance Program at the Centre on Asia and Globalization in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Government and International Affairs Program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. He investigated the social impediments to renewable energy systems for the NSF Electric Power Networks Efficiency and Security Program. He has worked in advisory and research capacities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Climate Change Technology Program. He is the co-editor with Marilyn A. Brown of Energy and American Society: Thirteen Myths (2007) and a frequent contributor to such journals as Electricity Journal, Energy Policy, Stanford Environmental Law Journal, and Daedalus.