Totally Awesome Clean Energy & Climate Change Talks at Google: Mark Z. Jacobson, Mark Ruffalo, & Marco Krapels

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Marco Krapels, one of the tremendous speakers in this video, is actually the person who shared this video below with me — huge thanks to Marco. The video covers some of the most important research on clean, renewable energy; energy, in general; electric vehicles; and climate change (a bit).

I’m sure you all know who Mark Ruffalo is (the Hulk, or the actor playing the Hulk, and many other characters). Mark Jacobson should be a familiar name to many long-time renewable energy followers — he coauthored the great piece in Scientific American a few years ago showing that we could fully power the world with renewable energy technology we have today. And, basically, he’s one of the top (or even the top) researcher on the topic today.

Marco, who I wasn’t familiar with before, actually really impressed me in his portion of the event and in the Q&A section at the end. He’s a leader in the banking field, but his comments on our policy needs and awareness-raising needs were surprisingly impressive, well-pointed. (Sorry, Marco, if you are checking in here, you know what the stigma of heads of banking is. 😀 I will try not to be so prejudiced in the future. Clearly, some banks and companies really are trying.)

Here’s the video, a true must-watch, in my opinion. Following the video is a little more text on the speakers and the overall discussion:

From the YouTube page:

Global warming, environmental pollution, and energy insecurity are three of the most significant problems facing the world today. This talk discusses a technical plan to solve these problems by powering 100% of the United States’ and world’s energy for all purposes, including electricity, transportation, industry, and heating/cooling, with wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) within 20-40 years. As part of the plan, we consider transmission infrastructure, resources, reliability, catastrophic risk, materials, costs, health effects, job creation, revenue streams, and policies needed. We discuss a detailed version of the plan for New York State and its potential application to California and other states. We also discuss the public engagement needed and how social media can help to implement the plan on the state, national, and international levels.

About the Speakers:

Mark A. Ruffalo is an Oscar-nominated actor and advocate of addressing climate change and renewable energy. In March 2011, Mark co-founded Water Defense to raise awareness about energy extraction impact on water and the public health. A regular contributor to the Guardian and the Huffington Post, Mark is a recent recipient of the Global Green Millennium Award for Environmental Leadership, and the Meera Gandhi Giving Back Foundation Award. He was named one of Time Magazine’s “People Who Mattered” in 2011. Most recently, he played Dr. Banner and the Incredible Hulk in the box-office hit, The Avengers.

Marco Krapels is the Executive Vice President of Rabobank N.A,,where he runs the commercial banking product groups including its capital markets and renewable energy finance divisions. He co-chairs the bank’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) committee, where he’s initiated notable sustainability efforts, including a Rabobank solar/Tesla electric car project featured in the New York Times. Marco is co-founder and board member of Empowered by Light, which promotes renewable energy solutions for 1.6 billion people living without electricity.

Mark Z. Jacobson is Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment and Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy. He is on the Energy Efficiency and Renewables Advisory Committee to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. He co-authored a 2009 cover article in Scientific American and two more recent articles in Energy Policy with Dr. Mark DeLucchi of U.C. Davis on how to power the world with renewable energy.


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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

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