The Electric Age

You will often read or hear in the news stories about smart grids, energy diversity, green houses gasses or oil imports. These are stories about energy concerns relevant to national interests. You do not hear about the 1.3 billion people who do not have access to electricity,or how delivering power to those who do not will change the world, or from what we should use to produce power for these people. More importantly, we do not hear about how lack of access to electricity prohibits the use of fundamental infrastructure such as lighting, cooling or heating or industrial applications that can create jobs in poor rural areas. Communication is also limited to what can be done without modern tools.