Powering the Dream by Alexis Madrigal

Powering the Dream by Alexis Madrigal covers the past 150 plus years of renewable energy history with a realistic understanding of the difficulties encountered while putting new technology into practice.  Each era has a new problem to solve.  At the beginning of the 20th century New York had a horse manure problem that appeared to be unsolvable until the electric cab, the bicycle and the liquid fueled vehicle came on the scene.  The freedom that the bicycle provided paved the way for the freedom of the automobile.  People want to go places without being stuck to someone elses schedule.

Now in the 21st century we are concerned about the carbon dioxide from the vehicles causing a different problem with climate change and what solutions appear to be the best fit.  He relates problems with boom and bust government financing of renewable energy.  Nearly all of the bioalgae research information was lost when it was defunded during the Reagan administration.   It had to be redone many years later. 

Getting the engineering bugs out of technology takes time as witnessed by the slow progression of wind technology in the 20th century.  The spectacular collapse of a large wind turbine built before the 1950's set back efforts to install wind turbines.

The Atlantic Monthly contributor spoke at a U of MN renewable energy conference in November, 2012 as noted in the blogpost Powering the Dream.

Learning from forgotten innovations - 2013 23 min..

The book, Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology is available from Amazon.com