Duggan Creates Foundation to Promote Global Prosperity Through Renewable Energy

Dawn is barely breaking as we approach the San Onofre Nuclear Power Station. The massive double domes loom over the freeway, millions of tons of concrete and steel, with thousands of miles of power lines snaking away to the horizon in every direction, a monument to our unending thirst for energy.

There’s just one problem: We need 18,500 more of them. By 2050.

Andrew Duggan, author and founder of the We Can Power The World Foundation, has brought me here so I can experience the scale of the problem.

“Based on current GDP growth around the world, we need 18,500 more power plants of this size to meet our energy needs in 2050.” (Each dome at the San Onofre plant puts out just about one gigawatt).

A world covered with thousands upon thousands of giant nuclear plants spewing radioactive waste isn’t a pretty picture.

“So what else can we do?” asks Duggan. “Well, it’s simple. Nuclear is part of the picture, but there are a multitude of green, renewable energy sources supplying far more power than we need. Enough sun hits the planet every day to power all of humanity thousands of times over. What’s lacking is investment in basic technology to harness it, and political courage to make it happen.”

So Mr. Duggan has launched a foundation, slated to become an educational non-profit, to raise global awareness about renewable energy solutions to basic human problems such as poverty, health, and lack of clean water; it will also raise funds for humanitarian projects to implement these solutions.

What would convince the former LPL Chief Information Officer to put everything on the line with a brand-new foundation?

“In a word, necessity,” said Duggan. “I’ll never forget the day I was looking at a graph of GDP growth across India and China and I realized what was really about to happen. These developing nations will need more energy than most people can even conceive of. And if it’s not there, the social and economic effects will be staggering.”

With over a decade in the energy industry, including executive consulting positions with Accenture, Viant and Sempra Energy, Duggan knows the effects of energy scarcity.

“I’ve worked in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Philippines. I saw children become ill because there was no energy to pump clean water. I watched families burn trees and trash for warmth. I was an energy consultant to Sempra Energy when Enron melted down, so was in a unique position to see the impacts of this debacle. I remember sitting with a baker who had to close his business down. He simply couldn’t charge enough for his bread to pay his electric bills. The human suffering that results from energy scarcity is real, it is happening now, and unless we do something on a global scale to change the way we create, store, transmit and use energy, we are in for one of the darkest periods in human history.”

But all that can change if enough people get involved, said Duggan. The new foundation will spread the word through grass-roots outreach, including online social networking, speaking tours and through the release of Duggan’s next book, scheduled for publication in summer 2009. The group will encourage people to adopt renewable power sources in their own localities, as well as lobbying their politicians to face the problem at the correct order of magnitude.

“There are millions of people out there who do care about this issue. If I can help them to grasp the imminence and size of this problem, my hope is that they can be galvanized into action, into doing something about it now so that instead of our darkest time, the 21st century can be our most triumphant; with cheap, plentiful energy driving a new era of global prosperity.”

Duggan’s new project brings such a possibility that much closer.

To visit the new site, join and get involved, visit WeCanPowerTheWorld.org.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Press. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.