Preparing to Speak on Renewable Energy
I’m going through an interesting exercise that I thought I’d share. In preparation for my upcoming speaking tour for my book on renewables, I’m working with some associates to “package” myself, and develop an online press kit.
As I’ve known for some time, the best overall strategy is to position one’s topic in the context of breaking news — relating the subject to the issues that are already on people’s minds. This really shouldn’t be too great a stretch, as renewables legitimately has touch-points into many dozens of different areas of great concern to anyone paying attention. I suppose I’m just lucky that the book is on clean energy and not a collection of recipes for baked chicken or some such.
I feel fairly well prepared to talk at a high level on the relationship between clean energy and any of the following, and I’ll certainly do some additional research to solidify my grasp before I go in to discuss:
Obvious issues:
Sustainability and environmentalism
Electric vehicle adoption
Smart grid
Wind, solar thermal, PV, geothermal, biomass, hydrokinetics
Renewable portfolio standards at the state and federal levels
Subsidies and incentives, carbon tax, cap and trade, other regulations
Other related issues in technology, economics, and politics
Business strategies of the corporate giants as they apply here, GE, Siemens, etc.
Jobs / unemployment
Midterm election results
Tax cuts – implications
Corporate lobbying and congressional ethics
Specific senators and representatives in the limelight, e.g., John Boehner
Oil spills and offshore oil drilling
China and India – energy policies of big players
Amazon protection
Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP – top issues
COP meetings: Copenhagen, Cancun
Terrorism
Wars, Al Quaeda, the Taliban, Iraq, Afghanistan
Nuclear arms proliferation
Storage of nuclear waste
Coal ash
Skyrocketing healthcare costs
Cancer rates
Socialism vs. capitalism, the limits of free-market capitalism, Wall Street vs. Main Street, etc.
Libertarianism vs. fascism
Democracy vs. oligarchy
Social ideas and ideal societies
Supreme Court decisions (e.g., Citizens United vs. Federal Election Committee) and the US Constitution
Important state referenda, e.g., California’s AB 32, Prop 23, Prop 16, etc.
Energy storage: nanotechnology, battery chemistries, potential shortages of lithium, rare earth elements, etc.
Other technology issues / potential breakthroughs: quantum physics as it applies to PV, cold fusion, etc.
I’ll just hope I don’t have to dodge a bunch of questions on baked chicken.
