Leadership

The author reveals how Thomas Friedman inadvertently details in The World is Flat how to bring about Thomas Casten's goal of eliminating barriers to efficiency expressed in Turning Off the Heat. She explains how Friedman's desire to see Manhattan Project between China and the US is really needed between electric energy companies and consumers. Friedman's flatteners are used to show that part of the solution to energy supply efficiency is a commitment to collaboration and information using the advancements of information technology and the internet. Friedman excites the author to adopt a visualization of one marketplace where there is web-based integration of our electricity, heat, and cooling systems into an efficient whole and where people introduce new efficiencies and fuel options every day. The author calls upon Friedman and William Bernstein to discuss the issue of leadership and the need to develop a business framework for energy efficiency that is secure, systematic, widely available, and has the ability to rapidly communicate vital information. Bernstein in The Birth of Plenty calls the “fundamental currency of capital markets—information”. The author states, “If the world is to gain energy efficiency and realize the economic opportunity that exists, OA and Opassess or their equivalents must be identified and institutionalized into our energy systems' heritage. The US should not only seek its own resource efficiency and economic strength but lead by example.”