Overview
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the United States needs reliable and inexpensive energy to propel our economy and protect our national security interests. Game Changers presents five research and development efforts from American universities that offer a cheaper, cleaner, and more secure national energy system. Drawing from the efforts of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and other leading university research centers, the book describes some of the energy innovations that will transform our future: natural gas from shales, solar photovoltaics, grid-scale electricity storage, electric cars, and LED lighting. For each of these innovations, the authors detail what is available today, what is near at hand, and what is on the horizon. In addition, they show how extreme energy reliability and performance demands put the United States military at the leading edge of driving energy innovations, and survey potentially game-changing energy technologies currently being put into use by the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force, on base and in forward deployment. The more choices our laboratories put on the table, the less constrained we are in using them to reach the things we really care about—health, family, business, culture, faith, and delight. This is what game changers are ultimately about.Author Biography
George Pratt Shultz is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was the 60th U.S. secretary of state and is advisory council chair of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, chair of the MIT Energy Initiative External Advisory Board, and chair of the Hoover Institution's Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy. He lives in San Francisco. Robert C. Armstrong is director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI). He was cochair of the Energy Research Council that laid the groundwork for MITEI and served as deputy director for the initiative's first six years, during which time it funded more than 800 research projects. He is the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering and former head of the department of chemical engineering. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
