Nobel Laureate Daniel Kammen, head of U.C. Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, discusses efforts to build clean energy solutions that meet the social and developmental needs of the communities they serve.

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Discussions around today’s clean energy transition tend to focus on technological challenges, and the costs and climate benefits of renewable energy. Yet the social and cultural implications of a transition to clean energy are often overlooked.

Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kammen talks about his research into the ways that the adoption of clean energy may impact society and, by extension, guide political discourse. He also discusses how taking into account social, economic and developmental realities could accelerate the move away from fossil fuels, and speed electrification in some of the poorest regions of the globe.

Daniel Kammen is Distinguished Professor of Energy in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also Director of Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, and a former Science Envoy for the U.S. State Department. 

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