Plugging into the Enernet

The current system of highly-centralised power production is extremely vulnerable - be it to man-made or natural disasters - and a more decentralised approach, based on local generation of power, has many benefits. He's someone who has the right credentials to explore this line of thought: Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet:

There is a lot to be learned from building the Internet over the last four decades, and we should make that analogy and apply those lessons. The “Enernet” is what we are all building to meet the world’s need for cheap and clean energy. It will not happen overnight, and it will be hard to predict how the various technology will play out over time. For example, the Internet was built to network mainframe computers and now it connects mostly cell phones and PCs. That was a big surprise.

Also look at the lessons of standardized interfaces. For the Internet, it took some years to figure that out. Some of them didn’t emerge, like the web, until 1989. For the Enernet we can look to the methods of standardization and how we choose to organize this thing. Fuels, biofuels themselves, are a standard.

Well, maybe, but biofuels are not a panacea - not least because it's clear that done badly they can actually exacerbate environmental problems rather than ameliorating them.