The United States needs reliable and inexpensive energy to propel our economy and protect our national security interests. Game Changers presents five research and development efforts from US universities that offer a cheaper, cleaner, and more secure national energy system. Drawing from the efforts of Stanford, MIT, and other leading university research centers, the book describes some of the innovations that are transforming our energy landscape: natural gas from shale, solar photovoltaics, grid-scale electricity storage, electric cars, and LED lighting.
For each innovation, the authors detail the fruits of individual research and development projects that are available today, near at hand, or on the horizon. They also show how extreme energy reliability and performance demands have put the US military at the leading edge of driving energy innovations and survey potentially game-changing energy technologies being used by the US Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force on bases and in forward deployments.
The more choices our laboratories put on the table, the more we are able to use them to reach the things we really care about: health, family, business, culture, faith, and delight, which is what game changers are ultimately about.
The late George P Shultz was the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He had a distinguished career in government, in academia, and in the world of business. Shultz was one of two individuals who have held four different federal cabinet posts; he taught at three of this country’s great universities; and for eight years he was president of a major engineering and construction company. He attended Princeton University, graduating in 1942 with a BA in economics. Shortly after graduation, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps and served through 1945. He then resumed his studies, this time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a PhD in industrial economics in 1949. From 1948 to 1957 he taught at MIT, taking a leave of absence in 1955 to serve as a senior staff economist on President Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Robert C. Armstrong is the director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering. A member of the MIT faculty since 1973, Armstrong served as head of the Department of Chemical Engineering from 1996 to 2007 and has directed MITEI since 2013, after serving as the organization’s deputy director from 2007-2013 with founding director Ernest Moniz. His research is focused on pathways to a low-carbon energy future.