Expanding Energy Education to Prepare for the Renewable Energy Transition

Energy systems are in transition from predominantly centralized fossil-fuel and nuclear-based infrastructures to more efficient and heterogeneous renewable-based configurations that include a diversity of different kinds of decentralized, distributed energy. This energy transition is much more than a technological substitution; this transition also includes major social innovations including institutional and cultural changes related to expectations for how individuals, households, communities and organizations use and manage energy. The renewable energy transition also has huge potential to redistribute the political “power” associated with huge multi-national conventional energy companies. This political potential of the local, distributed, abundant, and renewable characteristics of renewable-based energy… [more]