Michael Moynihan

On May 21st, NDN and New Policy Institute Green Project Director, Michael Moynihan, will host a presentation with NDN's new Senior Advisor, Alicia Menendez, in New York.  This presentation will examine the electricity industry and why the uptake of renewables has been so slow. Moynihan argues that the answer lies in the outdated and complex structure of Electricity 1.0, a closed, highly regulated network created a century ago, is fundamentally incompatible with clean technology and renewable power. America must upgrade to Electricity 2.0, an open, distributed network capable of fostering innovation and a clean technology revolution.

Clean energy has captured the imagination of people from Silicon Valley, who invested $5.4 billion in the sector last year, to President Obama, who highlighted it in his State of the Union Address. However, it has yet to fulfill its economic promise and displace legacy fuels in America’s electricity sector, especially when compared with the significant progress made in other countries. Today, non-hydro renewables account for just 3.5% of electricity in the US. 

Joining Michael on the 21st will be our new Senior Advisor, Alicia Menendez.  If you haven't had a chance to meet Alicia this will be a good time.  And check out this recent appearance by her on Fox News. 

We hope that you will be able to join NDN in New York.  Please RSVP if you can attend. 

Electricity 2.0 paper available here.

Electricity 2.0: Unlocking the Power of the Open Energy Network
Friday, May 21st
8:00 AM, breakfast will be served
The Harvard Club of New York, The Mahogany Room
35 West 44th Street
New York, NY

NDN Fellow and Green Project Director Michael Moynihan has the following quote in a really interesting piece in the Post today by Juliet Eilperin:

"The tortured history of Cape Wind is not just a not-in-my-backyard story of fisherman and wealthy people on the Cape," said Michael Moynihan, director of the Green Project at NDN, a centrist think tank. "It is emblematic of the difficulty of getting wind online, anywhere in America, with a system designed a century ago that is frankly hostile to renewable energy."

If you haven't read Michael's groundbreaking new paper, Electricity 2.0, or his recent SF Chronicle op-ed about the need to reimagine our electricity system to help unlock the clean tech and renewable revolution, you can find them both here.

Got an action packed line up this week for those either able to make it to lunch in our offices, or watch on-line.  Tomorrow we start with the Chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Phil Angelides, who will be talking about the necessity of understanding where we have been to help inform the decisions about how to best move forward.

Next up on Thursday is the unveiling of a major new paper by our Green Project Director, Michael Moynihan, proposing a new way to help unlock the transformative power of the clean tech and renewable energy revolution.  Michael has been working on this paper for close to a year now, and if these are areas of interest, you won't want to miss it. 

Finally, on Friday, an old friend, Joel Kotkin, returns to NDN with one of the first public events discussing his compelling new book, The Next 100 Million: America in 2050. 

So, a full week.  To RSVP or to get more information click here.   And look forward to seeing you at one of these wonderful events.

For those heading to Netroots Nation, NDN will be conducting two panels Saturday afternoon. You can find more info here, which also includes a link to the Netroots Nation site for more information. I will be joined at one of the panels by our own Michael Moynihan, NDN's Green Project Director, and our good friend, editor of Democracy Journal, Andrei Cherny, for a panel about the future of U.S. foreign policy. I also will be presenting a brand new, up-to-date version of our compelling power point presentation, The Dawn of a New Politics, at the other session. Even if you have seen the old version, this one is new enough that it will be worth sitting through - again.

The visionary behind Netroots Nation, Gina Cooper, has put on another great show this year. NDN has stepped up its support of NN, and is now a major sponsor of the whole conference. I look forward to seeing old friends, and meeting new ones - as always happens at what has become one of the most important gatherings of left of center politics each year.

It is amazing how far the netroots has come in these last few years. I first met Markos, of Daily Kos, in the summer of 2003 when all this was just beginning, before the word "blog" appeared in our spell checkers. The expanded definition of the netroots now reaches many millions of people each week, making it easier for them to connect to politics, and allowing many more millions of people to be meaingfully involved in fighting for a better future for their country. It has brought much more vigorous debate and accountability to progressive politics, and I for one believe robust debate and discussion - and occassional fighting among friends - is a prerequisite for the success of any movement. There is so much more vitality, so much more debate, so many more voices, so many more people, so much more money and so much more passion in left of center politics today as a result of what we call the netroots.

Markos and I reflected on all this at a forum we held in San Francisco in April, which you can watch here. And you can find my foreword to "Crashing the Gate," the critically acclaimed book by Markos and Jerome Armstrong, here. It offers some thoughts on the rise of a new 21st century progressive politics.

Look forward to seeing you there!