While former V-P and Nobel Peace laureate Al Gore was rallying the Web 2.0 troops to fight climate change on Friday, this weekend the newly turned green VC turned his sights on the New York Times op-ed page, where he laid out 5 steps needed to achieve his ambitious (if not unrealistic) U.S. clean energy plan.
Gore is calling for 100 percent of U.S. electricity to be from renewable power within 10 years. How on earth is that achievable? Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt has a similar plan, but closer to a twenty year time frame. Gore says the answer is federal incentives and Obama needs to help ASAP. Though he gives very few details on what each step would actually entail. What do you think?:
1). Large-scale federal incentives for constructing solar thermal, wind and advanced geothermal power plants. No word from Gore on how big those incentives should be.
2). Spend $400 billion over 10 years to build out a national smart grid that can connect renewable energy in remote locations to the cities where people will use it.
3). Help out not only Detroit but the struggling electric vehicle startups, and build a national fleet of plug-in hybrids that can help with storing energy for the grid.
4). Implement a national green retrofit plan for buildings, which can be combined with the congressional mortgage proposal.
5). Put a price on carbon and lead the way beyond Kyoto in the international community.
Posts
