Special Issue of Innovations

In conjunction with the clean energy address that President Obama is delivering at MIT today, MIT Press is releasing essays from the soon to be published fall special issue of Innovations journal on energy and climate solution. The pre-released essays are authored by White House Science Adviser John Holdren, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Economics Thomas Schelling, and the Director of MIT’s Washington office, William Bonvillian.

 

In his introducing to the special issue, Holdren states that the forthcoming publication is “as thorough a survey of energy and climate solutions as has yet been compiled.” Of the climate challenge, he writes:

 

“Without energy, there is no economy. Without climate, there is no environment. Without economy and environment, there is no material well-being, no civil society, no personal or national security. The overriding problem associated with these realities, of course, is that the world has long been getting most of the energy its economies need from fossil fuels whose emissions are imperiling the climate that its environment needs.”

 

Schelling, a leader in the study of climate change for over three decades, advances a new proposal for international coordination. Writing with reference to next month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, Schelling states,

“Among the ideas that I do not believe will get serious attention in Copenhagen is one I see as critical to addressing the climate challenge: creating a new institutional structure to coordinate assistance from advanced industrialized countries to developing countries with the objective of transforming the way that people in the developing world produce and utilize energy.”

 

Bonvillian’s essay, co-authored with GeorgetownUniversity’s Charles Weiss, summarizes and advances the core arguments presented in the authors’ MIT Press book title Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution. Bonvillian and Weiss argue that the transformation of the energy technology infrastructure represents an unprecedented challenge for policy-makers as well as for technological innovators:

“Where complex technology sectors like energy are involved, we need to have Congress legislate standard packages of incentives and support across common technology launch areas, so that some technology neutrality is preserved and the optimal emerging technology has a chance to prevail.”

 

The Director of the MIT Press, Ellen Faran, states that “The Innovations special issue reflects the commitment of MIT and the MIT Press to promote innovative solutions to global issues and to encourage the widest dissemination of its scholarship.”

 

Sample articles from the issue follow below. Members of the media wishing to see an advance copy of the issue should contact: [email protected].