In an interview on late-night television, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. outlined an energy manifesto for the next President of the United States.  His comments, which were based on an article he published in Vanity Fair provide the nucleus for an potential STS investigation for our students.  Indeed, if carried out in the early Fall semester, the investigation would enable students to participate in an important aspect of the Presidential Election.

In the article, entitled The Next President’s First Task (A Manifesto), Kennedy directs in his “letter” to the President, that we as a nation (and a world) should move toward a decarbonized economy, and that the electrical power grid of the U.S. needs to be revamped so that all sources of energy can deliver their power, e.g. solar, wind, geothermal, and others.  Right now, the electrical grid is not fully integrated, and unlike the telecommunication’s which was required by law to fully accessible.  The result of this law led to the the explosion of telecom activities.  

For example, the electrical power grid of the U.S., as shown in the map below, indicates that energy can not be moved from some regions (look at Texas), to other parts of the nation.  Why is this an issue?  Suppose, Texas developed its wind energy resource such that it was able to generate electricity not only for Texas, but for the other regions of the U.S.  Changing this will require new laws to revamp the present energy grid, but to open it up to all suppliers of energy.  

Kennedy cites two examples of countries that have “decarbonized” their economies, Sweden and Iceland.  In the case of Sweden, the government initiated a phase out of all fossil fuels by 2020 resulting in the acceleration of innovation in alternative energy sources.  In the case of Iceland, Kennedy points out that Iceland, one of the poorest countries in Europe moved to “energy-independence” by moving away from fossil fuels and developed its geothermal potential.  Iceland is now the fourth most affluent nation on Earth.  These examples are worth investigation by students as models of how a nation moved away from a reliance on fossil fuel energy to alternatives.

What can our students learn from the experiences in these two cases, and how can knowledge about energy, and how it is produced and distributed help in addressing the current crisis that the world faces today?