17 pages of professional initiatives I have worked on and am currently focused on in creating Internet-based platform networks promoting collaborative innovation and collective intelligence focused on catalyzing accessible knowledge and resource tools to assist cities, campuses, companies and citizens to transform from a fossil-fuel economy to solar-based economy within the next 25 years.

1. MICHAEL P TOTTEN
PROFESSIONAL HIGHLIGHTS OVER FOUR DECADES
Energy production, consumption, costs, risks, and associated externalities have
constituted my professional career and public endeavors since 1973. For 45 years I
have been immersed in continuous research and analysis, writing and speaking,
policymaking, pro bono advocacy, and worldwide consulting to governments and
corporations on the myriad upsides, downsides, and preferences among energy
options.
I have been an advocate and social entrepreneur promoting energy options offering
an abundance of positive externalities and a dearth of negative externalities. Energy
is the engine that drives the global economy, and it is not surprising that it manifests
diverse spillovers, both good and bad. By several accounts, monetizing the impacts of
just the fossil fuel externalities would increase global direct energy costs by $5.5
trillion per year (viz., IMF 2015, PRI/UNEP FI 2010), increasing energy’s share of
world GDP to 16 percent.
I have tracked and contributed to the technical, political-economic, socio-ecological
literature proliferating in the cascade of energy crises and threats over the past half
century. A consistent recommendation running throughout innumerable
assessments is to increase reliance on energy services that have the least lifecycle
costs and risks. Another important recommendation is to methodologically quantify
and incorporate the monetized estimates of ancillary benefits and externality costs
and risks associated with each energy option. This remains an ever-evolving process,
given inherent difficulties and limitations of quantifying qualitative and inter-
temporal attributes, as well as reaching agreement on how and how much to weight
the benefits, costs and risks of each attribute.
A dozen criteria that recur as important attributes to covet in each delivered energy
service include:
• Economically affordable - including for the poorest of the poor and cash-
strapped?
• Safe - through the entire life cycle?
• Clean - through the entire lifespan?
• Risk - is low and manageable, whether from technical error, financial
instability, price volatility, market disruptions, or acts of malice?
• Resilient and flexible - to volatility, surprises, miscalculations, human error?
• Ecologically sustainable - no adverse impacts on biodiversity or ecosystem
services, including over multi-spatial and temporal scales?
• Environmentally benign - maintains clean air and water, enhances soil quality,
leaves no cumulating toxic or hazardous chemicals, locally and globally?

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• Fails gracefully, not catastrophically - adaptable to abrupt surprises, crises,
and fat tail disasters (“black swans”)?
• Rebounds readily and swiftly from failures - low recovery cost and lost time?
• Endogenous learning capacities – intrinsic features breed new productivity
opportunities?
• Robust experience learning curves -- scalable innovation possibilities for
reducing negative externalities and amplifying positive externalities?
• Uninteresting target for malicious disruption - off the radar of terrorists,
cyberattacks, military planners?
It is imperative to keep in mind and take into consideration that uncertainty, surprise,
and unforeseen and unintended consequences are persistent, pervasive, and intrinsic
dynamics permeating the future, fraught as it is with the proverbial known unknowns
and unknown unknowns emergent from the nonlinear complex adaptive systems
comprising the biosphere and anthropo/techno-sphere.
Does any energy service offer all positive gains and no negative consequences? No.
Especially problematic is when the aggregated energy services keep expanding (i.e.,
7.5 billion people tending to 10 billion, now using ~18 TeraWatts/year of power and
projected to increase to 30+ TW by 2050).
Hence a plethora of methodologies have been employed to ascertain quantitative and
qualitative indicators that address these energy service attributes, many of which I
have participated in the development process over the decades. I continue to track
prominent methodologies, newly proposed ones, and evaluations of their respective
strengths, weaknesses, and evolving nature to be more effective. Methodologies are
essential and valuable when applied, but uptake of volunteer ones tends to be low
and slow (e.g., LEED certification), and mandated ones tend to be under-enforced
(especially in developing nations like China).
In the case of half a century of state and federal regulatory oversight of public utility
services, the most highly recommended best practices focus on fully embracing and
robustly implementing comprehensive, integrated resource planning methodologies
and incentive structures. This process for rating and ranking the least lifecycle cost-
and-risk options for delivering energy services to the point of use (through demand-
side and supply-side options), are only most fully being applied by half a dozen states
(RAP; NRDC; RMI; ACEEE).
End-use energy efficiency services are the top-rated and ranked option worldwide for
delivering energy services, although many entrenched, archaic regulatory
methodologies fail to harness but a small fraction of the available portfolio. The
remarkable drop in the LCOE (Levelized Cost of Electricity) of wind and solar power
make them the top rated & ranked competitors after efficiency in most utility markets
(LBNL; NREL), particularly when externalities are accounted for.

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A COIN platform network could greatly enhance the decision-making and investment
process for delivering utility services, and help derive greater benefits at or below the
existing cost (Lovins; PACE; Synapse; LBNL). Conversation exchanges and lively
discussions are at the core of platform interaction. Further enriched with high-
quality shared information, and access to real-time dashboards with quantitative and
qualitative wiki-facts and infographics regarding all pertinent aspects of delivering
energy services. Visualization and simulation of scenarios are new tools becoming
available. The platform enables expanding the interaction of participants beyond
regulators and utility representatives, to encompass any locally concerned citizen,
company, city or campus.
Populated with a variety of apps and continually enhanced by evolving machine
learning algorithms, the platform can offer a range of services, e.g.: an expanding
repository of responses to questions and queries, recommendations and
comparisons; provide real-time monitoring, evaluation and comparison stats; or,
sharing how communities, companies and campuses are aggregating their delivered
energy services to procure competitively priced energy services with zero emissions,
pollution and other externalities. The ramifications are quite prolific in possibilities;
for example, early city and company adopters could leverage the platform knowledge
resources and algorithms, as are being planned in a number of European countries, to
expand into financing other cities to undertake similar money saving, environmental
enhancing, healthy ROI investments.
Again, these attributes are not all equally weighted, nor are all of them amenable to
weighting; and even quantitative weightings evolve over time as new knowledge and
evidence emerges.
My own professional work unfolded during the evolving debates surrounding energy
crises and threats, all of which I worked on through policymaking, at various times at
local, state, national and global scales:
1) Crippling urban air pollution from the 1950s on;
2) Nuclear power cost overruns from the 1960s on;
3) Middle East oil disruptions and foreign oil dependency from the 1970s on;
4) Persian Gulf oil wars from the 1970s on;
5) “Soil for oil” conversion of intact grasslands, wetlands, and other ecosystems,
destroying tropical rainforests, savannahs, and temperate landscapes to
produce ethanol and biodiesel from the 1970s on;
6) Biomass combustion in developing nations causing widespread premature
morbidity & mortality;
7) Nuclear accidents from the 1970s on;
8) Nuclear reactor fuel proliferation risks from the 1970s on;
9) Acid rain and ozone-depleting chemicals from the 1980s on;
10) Giant oil spills from 1980s on;
11) Hydrodam flooding of tropical river basins threatening one-third of
freshwater fish species, spreading infectious diseases, and releasing four
percent of global GHG emissions;

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12) Environmental, ecological, and cultural issues associated with: wind power
(e.g., bird and bat kills); solar PV (hazardous chemicals and materials); and
some energy efficient products (e.g., sky pollution from bright LED street
lights, or ODP/GWP (ozone-depleting/global warming potential) of
refrigerants) and energy efficient building poor designs (tight construction,
poor ventilation, and/or incorrect moisture control causing indoor air
pollution);
13) Water dependency (45% of total U.S. extraction for thermal power plants,
and very high consumption rates for biofuel plantations);
14) Catastrophic climate destabilization threat, ocean acidification, coral reef
extinctions, from the 1990s on; and,
15) Cyberattacks on large energy installations, transmission grids and pipelines
from 2000 on.
It is widely acknowledged, but remains underappreciated, that delivering energy
services through (cost-competitive) efficiency improvements ranks superior to all
energy supply options. The core attribute of efficiency is using information/
knowledge to deliver energy services with declining levels of mass and energy input
and waste/pollutant output. Efficiency has driven (and been driven by) innovations
since time immemorial, and play especially prominent roles during industrial
revolutions. The cost-effective pool has been and remains immense, with efficiency
gains in the USA now displacing some 30 million barrels of oil equivalent per day over
the past half century, while accruing multi-hundred billion dollar yearly savings
(Rosenfeld; Lovins; ACEEE).
Many assessments indicate half of all new energy services can be delivered at least-
cost-and-risk by efficiency gains in the U.S. & OECD nations, and 75 percent of new
energy services are achievable throughout developing nations – at 2 to 15 times less
cost than supply options – while achieving multi-trillion dollar savings and accruing
comparably large avoided externality costs, i.e., tax-free, ratepayer-free reductions in
emissions and pollution (viz., McKinsey, LBNL, RMI, ACEEE).
Moreover, the pool of efficiency gains is rapidly growing with the expansion of the 3rd
Industrial Revolution (Rifkin)/4th Industrial Revolution (WEF) GAIN1 technologies
and business model innovations & disruptions. This is based on the accelerating
scientific, technological, and engineering advances driving (and recursively being
further driven by) the electrification, digitization, digitalization, Internetization,
algorithmization, mass minimization/miniaturization, and modularization of goods
and services throughout the economy and society. Especially valuable opportunities
are occurring as these myriad technology disruptions converge to offer super-
exponential growth and gains (Seba).
Displacement of combustion with electrification technologies, for example, garners an
intrinsic 35 percent efficiency gain, saving money, as well as securing all the
1 GAIN is the acronym for Genetics, Auto-robotics, Informatics and Nanotechnologies.

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upstream benefits of reduced emissions and pollution. Another example is buildings
outfitted with wireless smart sensor networks streaming continuous data through
machine intelligent algorithms, that are enabling continuous commissioning of high
performance facility operations achieving 80% energy savings in these nanogrid-
capable buildings (Infosys 2014).
Even greater gains loom at the system scale, where these multiple technology
disruptions converge to enable such radically more energy and resource efficient and
financially remunerative options like fleets of on-demand autonomous electric
vehicles, and the synergistic inter-connection of electric vehicles, nanogrid-operated
buildings with onsite solar power and battery storage, and the utility grid (Seba;
Lovins; Kempton; Rifkin).
Cities take on critical importance as distributed mini-grid platforms, with the
potential to connect neighborhood microgrids that in turn aggregate clusters of
nanogrid-operating buildings, coupled with EVs as plug-in, detachable, interoperable,
mobile picogrids. Cities can laterally connect to form regional macrogrids, further
linking into multi-state smart supergrids. A fractal network emerges, designed to be
resilient, even anti-fragile (Taleb), so that if and when the system fails, it does so
gracefully and limited in scope, with innumerable “islands” of sustained operation,
and not catastrophically collapsing the whole system.
There is already one such platform network operating within the Department of
Defense, focused on the mandate that all military bases, installations and facilities
implement solar- and renewable-powered microgrids, with onsite storage, capable of
fully operating in “island mode” if the grid or pipeline collapses. Making that network
open source would enable spillover to the cities also wishing to become as anti-
fragile. Big data sets, for example, indicate half of U.S. rooftops are solar capable, with
a technical potential of generating 1,432 terawatt-hours (TWh) of annual rooftop
solar PV, roughly one-third of total U.S. electricity consumption. In some states, like
California, the rooftop generation potential is 75 percent (NREL 2016). Solar
canopies sited on ground spots could triple this technical potential (parking lots,
along rail and roadways, on superfund sites, etc.).
Annual surveys of commercial and institutional building owners/operators rank
energy security at the top of their concerns and investments, along with efficiency to
reduce energy costs and emissions (Johnson Controls 2017). Unisys Security Index,
the leading security barometer, found two-thirds of Americans are most concerned
about national security and threat of terrorism, and more than half are worried about
cyber-attacks (Unisys 2017).
Americans also show comparably high levels of support for solar, wind, and
renewables (Leiserowitz et al. 2017). Herein lies a tremendous opportunity,
harnessing Americans’ security concerns to support their cities in emulating the
military’s island-able, renewable-powered microgrid network mandate. It would
derive significant ancillary free benefits of deep emission and pollution reductions.

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Several analysts have even suggested using the sovereign backing of government to
provide “homeland security bonds” for accelerating the transformation (Totten
2017). Other ancillary benefits include significant employment and business
creation, and robust export market opportunities.
Overall, there are compelling assessments by numerous public and private entities
regarding the looming technology and business model disruptions of legacy systems
and incumbent industries that indicate potentially huge declines in capital/operating
expenses (capex/opex), materials and energy inputs, plus emissions, pollutants, and
wastes outputs, while delivering an increasing amount of energy and mobility
services (Seba 2014; BCG, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, PWC, Deloitte,
Citi).
Numerous challenges and barriers occurring at multiple levels and myriad
institutions do require addressing as these opportunities scale. Efficiency gains, for
example, confront two major issues in need of attention:
1) Possible “rebound” effects (sometimes occurring when efficiency gains lower
the cost of purchase and/or operation of a product, which could lead to greater
use that negates efficiency gains; plus the aggregate effect of more people
purchasing the lower cost device can lead to increasing overall energy
consumption); and,
2) Most policies, rules, regulations, budgets, R&D, and subsidies worldwide are
crafted for traditional supply options, resulting in significant untapped, lost
efficiency (and solar and wind) opportunities with each passing year (Caldeira
2010; McKinsey).
There are value-leveraging resolutions for each of these issues that remain
underused.
My professional efforts have largely focused on promoting energy, water and
resource efficiency policies and market-based incentives, plus superseding
antiquated regulations, and removing unnecessary barriers (technical, financial,
informational, institutional). This began with serving as the Executive Assistant to
the Chairman of the Orange County (CA) Board of Supervisors in the latter 1970s,
promoting solar access ordinances and solar-capable roof designs and building
orientation to dramatically reduce solar installation costs at some later date.
In 1979 I became Executive Director (ED) of President Carter’s Clearinghouse on
Community Energy Efficiency, distributing voluminous numbers of documents on
best practices to a network of Mayors, City Managers, County Executives, and State
Legislators. During this period I also authored the volumes, Local Alternative Energy
Futures, and Energy-Wise Options for State and Local Governments, as well as the 1984
platform strategy document, Road to Trillion Dollar Energy Savings.

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In the early 1980s, as Executive Director of the national Energy Conservation
Coalition, I was lead advocate promoting the 4-title Energy Efficient America Act
(establishing national appliance, building, and vehicle efficiency standards). In 1984, I
successfully shepherded Congressional funding for a new Least-Cost Utility Planning
Initiative program to promote market-driven public utility regulatory changes that
incorporated demand-side efficiency opportunities as competitive energy service
options.
I drafted the 12-title, 250-page Global Warming Prevention Act of 1988-89, with
efficiency as the critical core action. It was introduced by Rep. Claudine Schneider (R-
RI) and promoted as the “U.S. Economic Productivity Enhancement and
Competitiveness Export Act,” given the multi-trillion dollar gains and savings it would
help catalyze while also accruing multi-trillion dollar avoided costs in emissions and
pollution reductions, and declines in vulnerable foreign oil imports. One-third of the
U.S. House members cosponsored the legislation, and endorsed by several dozen
major environmental, consumer, labor, religious, scientific, and business
organizations.
At the same time, I have strongly advocated for those supply options with multiple
attributes that, as a composite, are highly preferred because of their lesser risks and
impacts. At the present time these include solar PV, solar dishes, solar thermal-
electric/concentrated solar power, onshore and offshore wind power, and a
miscellany of locally and regionally available, affordable, and acceptable renewable
options (biowastes, geothermal, and hydrokinetic water, wave, and tidal).
It is assumed that in all cases rigorous environmental and cultural assessments are
conducted, and qualified siting and specified construction requirements are adhered
to. More than a dozen global and national energy assessments have been conducted
in recent years that indicate a 100 percent renewable powered global economy is not
only technically feasible and affordable, but financially rewarding over business-as-
usual (e.g., Jacobson & Delucchi 2017 & 2018; Breyer et al 2017 & 2018; Lovins;
Sovacool).
Many national energy assessments incorporate significantly large-scale biofuel
plantation expansion, which is arguably an unsound component, ecologically,
climatically, and economically. For example, biomass for fueling internal combustion
engines (ICEs) incurs a land footprint 30 to 60 times larger than wind or solar
powering EVs, has a water footprint 100-fold larger, and emits air pollution and
emissions. Carbon opportunity cost calculations per hectare also show “solar power
can provide at least 100 times more useable energy per hectare on three quarters of
the world's land” compared to growing biofuel crops (Searchinger et al. 2017).
In the Catastrophe Zone

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In the nearly three decades that have passed since first drafting the Global Warming
Prevention Act, the threat of catastrophic climate destabilization is proving to be far
greater a peril than ever imagined. Our generation is racking up massive planetary
emission debts that will heavily burden and adversely impact more than several
hundred generations to come (Rockstrom 2017).2
Mercator’s global carbon clock shows the lower estimate carbon budget scenario to
stay under 1.5 degrees Celsius is totally exhausted, with a deficit burden
accumulating 1,268 tons of CO2 every second, surpassing 78 million tons of CO2
emissions as of mid-December 2017.
Even the most optimistic higher estimate carbon budgets for a 1.5°C warmer world
will exhaust the 136 million ton remaining budget within the next 40 months (mid-
2021). We will exhaust the carbon budgets for a 2°C warmer world some time
between 2025 and 2039. Even worse news is now regularly reported:
“Our study indicates that if emissions follow a commonly-used business-as-usual
scenario, there is a 93% chance that global warming will exceed 4°C by the end of
this century. Previous studies have put this likelihood at 62%.” [Brown & Caldeira,
Nature, 12-07-2017]
And this worse news begets more worse news: a 4°C global average temperature
increase could trigger 10 identified ‘tipping elements,’ potentially flooding the
atmosphere with massive emission increases that could push global temperatures to
and beyond 7°C (Rockstrom 2017; Lenton 2016; Schellnhuber 2016).
For example, there is between 225 and 345 GtC in thawed permafrost which may
eventually be released at a 2°C stabilization target, and only ~30% lower at 1.5°C
stabilization. Due diligence on our part, ethically, morally and financially, calls for
closely examining how to make better-informed investment decisions to entirely
avert these locked-in costs and risks our generation is now moving to impose on the
next 350 generations (Burke 2017; Rockstrom 2017).
Negative Emission Technologies (NETs) will be necessary to deal with the rapidly
accumulating carbon debts. Most Net options are currently riddled or plagued with a
myriad of problems that lead many scientists and economists to strongly caution
against locking the future into colossal dependence on these still-unproven
technologies. This unequivocally requires reversing our current practices of
postponing (delaying and doing little) the deep, steady reductions of humanity’s
current 50 GtC02-e per year of emissions; achieving zero emissions by 2050, and 80
percent reductions by 2035 (Anderson 2017; Jacobson & Delucchi 2017 & 2018).
2 MIT Cosmology Professor Max Tegmark does suggest in his new book, Life 3.0, that the eventual
achievement of artificial general intelligence (AGI) poses an even greater catastrophic threat to
humanity than climate cataclysms. Time will tell, but for this century climate poses a larger peril, and
one in which benign AI applications can play a vital role in rapidly collapsing emissions.

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Given the abundance of available, competitive, emission-free options for displacing all
new fossil-fueled power plants, an obvious immediate step is shifting the many
hundreds of billions of dollars out of expanding fossil fuels and into the emission-free
opportunities. Equally important is accelerating replacement of all combustion
devices (i.e., gas furnaces, boilers, water and space heaters, stoves, industrial
processes) with electric-powered devices, displacing all internal-combustion engines
with electric vehicles, and replacing current fossil-fueled thermal power plants with
end-use efficiency gains, plus solar and wind power. These are major opportunities
that many countries are already pursuing.
There is also one immediately available, well tested, verified, and totally benign “geo-
engineering” NET option to scale globally: increasing the albedo (heat reflection) of
urban rooftops and pavements worldwide. By reflecting rather than absorbing the
sun’s heat cities remain cooler, require fewer thermal power plants for air-
conditioning, and retain cleaner air and experience fewer smog episodes.
The pioneering research and experiments on high-albedo urban surfaces carried out
by Dr. Art Rosenfeld and Hashem Akbari at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab since the
1980s -- who I was honored to collaborate with at the outset while working in
Congress and for several subsequent decades -- has given rise to an exceptionally
large global opportunity that offers a fast payback, zero-emissions means of cooling
cities.
More than 50 gigatons of CO2–e could be kept out of the atmosphere, while accruing
several trillion dollars in cumulative savings and avoided costs (Akbari et al. 2012;
Rosenfeld et al. 2009). For comparison, to match the carbon savings from increasing
urban surface albedo it would take more than 10% of existing world crop hectares to
grow costly biofuel crops for displacing fossil fuels with BECCS power plants (Bio-
energy with carbon capture and storage), or roughly the same area and costs to
displace a percentage of vehicle fuels.
All assessments and estimates of future emission levels, climate sensitivity, impact
costs, and mitigation insurance costs, no matter how quantitatively rigorous the
models can strive to be, remain illustrative projections, not forecasts, given so many
uncertainties.
Still, the scenarios and models merit close scrutiny, as when studies indicate future
costs for BECCS ranging from $89 to $535 trillion, depending on global emissions
staying level or rising 2 percent/year (Hansen et al 2017; Smith et al 2015). Greater
scrutiny is also needed regarding the financial implications of scientists’ estimates of
future societal impact costs this century that could exceed $1,200 trillion (mean
value); these are currently off the radar of all government agencies who are making
multi-hundred billion infrastructure investments with total disregard to
consequences 50 to 100 years in the future (Parry et al. 2009).

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These are immense costs that at the very least command significantly greater funding
to spur R&D advances, breakthroughs, and innovative solutions on the various
mitigation, negative-emission technology, and resilient adaptation options. This is
vital and imperative, but hardly sufficient. Far more preferable, essential and effective
--economically, ecologically, and equitably -- is to accelerate declines of the world’s 50
GtC02-e emissions to zero as rapidly as feasible (80% by 2035 and 100% in the 2040-
2050 time frame), in order to halt the accumulating carbon debt (1,278 tCO2 per
second). This is critical for steeply lowering the probability of triggering tipping
elements that could foreclose many NET options (e.g., one-third of global croplands
are projected to be lost due to climate impacts given business-as-usual).
The sobering reality is that the incremental gains in slowing emissions now being
applied are woefully inadequate to tackle this unprecedented challenge of global and
historical magnitude. Accelerating and scaling the evolving best-in-play
opportunities is now an imperative, buttressed with a significant pipeline of private
and public innovations emerging from a steady stream of well-funded Basic and
Applied R&D, Demonstrations, and Commercialization.
For context, the Landscape of Climate Finance Flows monitoring system assessed
2015/2016 at a global total of $410 billion per year (Climate Policy Institute 2017).
As Harvard Economics Professor Martin Weitzman has been arguing for more than a
decade, a minimum “insurance” policy against catastrophic climate destabilization
would be allocating more like $2.5 trillion per year towards mitigation, i.e., at least 3
percent of the $74 trillion global GDP (comparable to what is now allocated for air
and water pollution control). Recent assessments indicate roughly half that sum is
necessary for transforming to an emission-free global energy system (IEA 2017).
Such massive numbers numb the mind and, more importantly, give no indication as to
how innovatively these funds are being or will be applied (or even if the funds will be
forthcoming by national governments) so as to result in harnessing robust lifecycle
least-cost-and-risk opportunities that also garner multi-attribute benefits.
Several global energy assessments that do take these factors into consideration
encouragingly find the emission-free future scenarios could result in financially
competitive LCOEs compared to business-as-usual LCOE projections, while accruing
tens of trillions of dollars in annual direct savings and avoided externality costs (e.g.,
Jacobson et al. 2017 & 2018; Breyer et al. 2017 & 2018; Hawken et al. 2017; Lovins et
al. 2016).
Obviously, modeling and scenarios are not so much harbingers as possibilities and
potentialities. Only continuous actions, adaptively evolving, that are scaled and
accelerated over time and geographical locations will reveal their efficacy. And the
current U.S. Administration and Congress, dominated and controlled by climate
deniers who are intent on promoting more fossil fuel consumption while retarding
the market’s growth of emission-free competitive solutions, underscores the
wildcards in play that could derail the best available opportunities.

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Moreover, even supposing a supportive President and Congress, the embedded
incumbent industries and century-old legacy political-economic infrastructure
designed around and for growing and sustaining the fossil-centric energy engine of
the last industrial revolution, with its pipeline and stovepipe mode of process
operation, is not conducive nor optimally configured for the level of accelerated
scaling of innovations now imperative.
The emergence of Platform networks, however, offers a technology disruption that is
proving to be the vital tool now needed for scaling. Platforms foster COINs --
collaborative innovation and collective intelligence networks (Benkler 2006; Gloor
2017; Chase 2016), generating prodigious levels of interaction that are, in turn,
generating prolific levels of new value, opportunities, and outcomes. Platform
networks are increasingly proving to be highly disruptive to legacy systems and
incumbent businesses (Choudary 2015; Ismail et al. 2014; Parker et al. 2017).
Parallel to my immersion in energy specifically, and ecological sustainability
generally, has been my ceaseless engagement in promoting COIN networks, beginning
with pursuit of a PhD at Stanford University in 1976 that I abandoned in favor of
creating an Internet-based social enterprise working with a group of fellow
consultants in Berkeley in anticipation of public access to the ARPANET civilian spin-
off. The focus was on sharing high-quality, well-quantified information and
knowledge that could be used to intervene at public utility commissions in proposing
end-use efficiency investments as far lower in cost and risk to the many thousands of
large coal and nuclear power plants then being approved for construction.
When the opening arose to become Executive Director of the President’s
Clearinghouse for Community Energy Efficiency I seized the opportunity to shift the
program from the costly process of distributing paper documents by snail mail, to
digitizing documents for Internet distribution, combined with an electronic query
network for the local officials and staff. That whole effort was shut down the first
month of President Reagan’s term of office.
But my Internet networking efforts continued throughout the 1980s while working as
Chief Advisor to U.S. Representative Claudine Schneider (R-RI), as noted above, in
regard to setting up an Internet-based communication initiative between state public
utility commissioners about lifecycle least-cost-and-risk integrated planning
methodologies and innovative market-driven regulations and incentive rate reform.
My promotion of global Internet-based networks accelerated in the 1990s, when I
headed up the small social enterprise initiative, the Center for Renewable Energy and
Sustainable Technology (CREST). CREST pioneered the production of hypermedia
and interactive multimedia CD-ROMs as well as Internet communication exchanges,
for sharing immense amounts of information tools and knowledge resources with
information-starved developing country professionals and citizens.

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With the advent of web browsers we began migrating the contents and interactive
apps from the 20+ CD-ROMs onto the Web. For a period of time in the 1990s CREST
was one of the largest Internet open source sites of energy efficiency, renewable
energy, and green building information and tools. For this innovative social
enterprise I was honored with the Lewis Mumford Prize in 2000, given by the
Architects, Designers & Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR).
Raising funds for such a trans-disciplinary distribution network of digital and
Internet-based resources proved extremely difficult. Government bureaucrats were
risk averse. Foundations operated in silos that didn’t communicate among each other
and were totally unfamiliar with this technical thing, the Internet. And West Coast
venture capitalists were not interested in a social enterprise that had no hockey stick
payout exit strategy.
I took the next step in 2000 by aligning with one of the most prestigious, large and
well-funded NGOs, the World Resources Institute. I co-headed WRI’s Sustainable
Enterprise Program, launching the Internet-based social enterprise known as Safe
Climate, Sound Business. The business plan focused on accelerating climate solutions
and best-in-practice local, state and national policies, while sustaining the site by
marketing the most energy efficient products, initially to the memberships of the
dozen largest NGO groups that included a pool of some 10 million citizens. But the
2001 dot-bomb brought this project to an abrupt closure.
When one of the biggest NGOs in the world, Conservation International (CI), received
a $35 million grant from Gordon Moore (ultimately more than $600 million) to
network the world’s conservation scientists as a way of accelerating information
sharing and GIS mapping of high-biodiversity ecosystems, and William Ford donated
$25 million to launch CI’s Center for Environmental Leadership in Business, I was
asked to be Chief Advisor on Energy, Climate, Water and Green Economics, and
develop innovative Internet-based initiatives.
CI’s field programs operating in 40 biodiversity-rich, cash-poor developing nations,
confronted multiple, interconnected challenges that all came down to how to promote
ecologically sustainable economic development, fostering sustainable livelihoods for
impoverished citizens, while also protecting some of the richest biodiversity habitat
on the planet from being burned down, and preventing the myriad ecosystem
services from being destroyed (watersheds, mangroves, peatlands, grasslands,
forests, coral reefs, etc.).
My work over the past half-century has followed and worked on the wicked problems
many of these nations were mired in, choosing to liquidate their irreplaceable
ecosystems for securing the funds to pay for importing expensive fossil fuels,
construct large hydrodams, and expand vast plantations of bioenergy crops. During
this time I was invited in 2007 to spend a year as Senior Climate Advisor at
Google.org. helping on climate solution initiatives in China.

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This was prompted by my prior three-year effort co-leading CI’s business team
working with Walmart to analyze the global ecological footprint of their stores,
operations and supply chain, and help develop their sweeping sustainability
commitments. Our assessment found 90% of the footprint was in the supply chain,
and 80% of the supply chain was located in China.
My efforts, both in working with Walmart in the U.S. and in China, as well as during
my secondment at Google.org, was focused on: 1) leveraging Walmart’s immense
procurement clout to drive manufacturing of higher efficiency products (lights,
appliances, consumer electronics, trucks, electric motors) for Walmart and their
suppliers to market as well as use; and, 2) leverage Walmart and their suppliers to
push for innovative utility regulatory reform both in the U.S. and China.
Walmart quickly grasped that it was good business sense for utilities to provide
energy efficiency incentives to Walmart stores and distribution centers, to Walmart’s
suppliers’ manufacturing facilities, and to Walmart’s 100 million customers, to
purchase the most efficient energy-consuming products. This led them to join with
intervenor groups like NRDC to testify in support of integrating demand resources
into utility decisionmaking.
The plan for China was to install a digital tracking system of all the motors, pumps,
compressors, fans, lights, cooling, refrigeration, etc. used in the 10,000+ supplier
facilities, then aggregate the devices that could be replaced with high-efficiency
models, and bid the saved GWs and GigaWatt-hours (GWhs) as a lower cost service
option than building numerous proposed coal plants and hydrodams. Electric motors
and drive system equipment consume 60 percent of China’s electricity, and 30 to 50
percent high-ROI savings are available through retrofits and new purchases,
respectively.
This was already being done in Jiangsu Province as a result of a successful initiative
spearheaded by NRDC and the Regulatory Assistance Project, with funding by the
Energy Foundation. Some 10 GW of savings from efficient motor replacements were
identified, which they wittily call Efficiency Power Plants (EPPs), with an incredibly
low LCOE of just 1 cent per kWh – some 10 times lower than delivered industrial
retail prices.
The focus on China while at Google was derailed when Google.org decided to not use
any of the available $100 million in China as a result of China imposing Internet
censorship rules. My time was salvaged by developing a White Paper on the multiple
benefit opportunities that could accrue to Great Plains farmers and ranchers who
embraced wind farms as the new “cash cows” (Totten 2007). The Great Plains states,
where 95% of U.S. terrestrial strong wind resources exist, remain heavily dependent
on fossil fuels; fortunately, that is finally changing in the decade since my assessment
(albeit still too slowly).

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Much of the Great Plains is projected to become plagued with continuous dust storms
this century that make the 1930s Dust Bowl look miniscule; and much of the region
may become uneconomic for farming or ranching for a millennium after all emissions
are halted (Solomon et al. 2008).
Currently 75 percent of the Great Plains is farmed or ranched, while only generating
around 5 percent of the region’s GDP. In sharp contrast, several million large wind
turbines located across 3 percent of the Great Plains landscape could generate twice
the level of revenues through royalty fees, while generating most of the nation’s
electricity consumption. And 90 percent of that land would still be available for eco-
restoration, or ongoing farming/ranching. [Amazingly, packing all the turbine towers
into one space would fit inside one of Wyoming’s large coal strip mines!]
Most of all, the secure, sustainable income source would enable shifting to some of
the most promising ecological farm and ranching practices developed over the past
half century at research centers like The Land Institute in Kansas, headed by the
innovative plant biologist Wes Jackson. Jackson and his colleagues are productively
growing deep-rooting native prairie grasses that better retain soil and water, while
enhancing soil carbon and are more tolerant to prolonged droughts.
Jackson and colleagues have also developed a 50-year “farm bill” that shows how to
scale the ecological farm practices nationwide to replace the more soil-erosion prone,
higher water consuming, less drought tolerant, monoculture annual crops. It is a
promising opportunity to restore soil carbon, reduce the need for petrochemical
fertilizers, and reduce water demand (Jackson & Berry). Again, entrenched
incumbents and legacy policy systems are proving very resistant to embracing
changes.
Furthermore, these herbaceous perennial polycultures co-evolved with bison herds.
To date, mainly billionaire Ted Turner, as well as some tribal nations, are investing in
the synergism of wind farms, restored prairie grasses and reintroduced bison herds,
serving as proof-of-concept for an opportunity capable of being scaled many orders of
magnitude.
I continued to periodically work with Walmart on the metrics and multiple
sustainability targets we helped develop for and with them, including continuous
pursuit of efficiency gains, promotion of marketing high-efficiency products, shifting
to 100 percent renewables by 2020, and achieving a zero waste stream, among
numerous other initiatives. There is much to be said about this engagement process,
but to single out one excellent outcome: fuel efficiency gains of Walmart’s Class 8
truck fleet, the largest private fleet in the world.
Prior to the sustainability initiative in 2005, Walmart was proud it was increasing its
fleet average fuel efficiency of 6.5 mpg by 10 percent, and pursuing a shift to
biodiesel. Biodiesel for the fleet’s 140 million gallon demand would require 121,000
ha (300,000 acres) of oil palm plantations. Instead, with our team partner Amory

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Lovins and his RMI colleagues, who had just completed a major oil displacement
report for the Pentagon, Winning the Oil Endgame, explained in meticulous detail that
commercially available efficiency gains could double Walmart’s fleet average at a cost
of $12 per barrel oil saved, and could be tripled for a cost of $18 per barrel of oil
saved. Tripling would reduce fleet demand to 46 million gallons, and eliminate the
need for two-thirds of the biodiesel. Walmart embraced the opportunity, and has
surpassed doubling efficiency and closing in on tripling fuel efficiency. Walmart’s
recent order of eight Tesla electric semi-trucks is a sign of this continuing efficiency
drive.
Several of my key proposals were thought premature for Walmart to take up, as for
example in 2005 when I shared with Rob Walton, CEO, an analysis of how much
electricity Walmart could generate on its 140,000 acres of parking lots and roof tops.
The cost of solar was so much higher than the huge pool of efficiency opportunities,
that Walmart took another decade before they realized that solar and wind costs had
dropped precipitously, and began the aggregate purchasing off-site wind and onsite
solar power. Walmart also has become one of the strongest advocates for allowing
utility retail customers to aggregate their operations for selling unused MWhs
(Demand Response) into the wholesale grid market (FERC Order 745).
My initiatives this past decade have essentially melded efforts catalyzing an emission-
free world energy system with the power of COIN platform networks. This has been
done through three consulting initiatives. As a Senior Fellow for one year at the Rocky
Mountain Institute in 2014, I developed a COIN platform network concept to facilitate
interaction and sharing efforts among cities and college campuses already committed
to achieving net zero emissions.
In 2015, at the request of the MacArthur Foundation, WWF’s Market Institute
contracted with me to review and assess the large-scale carbon protection and
restoration initiative they had submitted to the Foundation for funding. WWF had a
proposal carbon target that ramped up to ~7.6 Gt CO2e per year of emissions
reductions achievable by 2040.
After validating the proposed savings were within the range of achievability, my
recommendations focused on methods and mechanisms for increasing the likelihood
of securing such large savings by dealing with a number of pernicious difficulties that
plague land-based changes over long time periods. Blockchain encrypted micro
ledger techniques, for example, could be employed to raise assurance of the integrity
and trustworthiness of claimed results. Simultaneously, operating a COIN platform
network, enabling continuous discussion and interaction among and between
government agencies, corporations, civil stakeholders, and academic researchers,
would be invaluable in identifying problems arising, and how to carry out any
necessary adaptive management changes as new insights and evidence became
available.

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In 2016, the prolific author Jeremy Rifkin, Wharton School Lecturer on disruptive
technologies, economic and social theorist, and proponent of the Third Industrial
Revolution (TIR), asked me to join his team working on the TIR initiative in Europe.
This involved extensive researching, analysis, writing, editing, conducting group
discussions with multi-stakeholders, and doing workshop presentations, on the final
500-page TIR Strategy documents we prepared for Luxembourg, and for the
Metropolitan region of Rotterdam and Den Haag. Jeremy and I had collaborated in
the 1980s in promoting the book, The Green Lifestyle Handbook: 1001 Ways to Heal
the Earth, and my subsequent decades of work on energy and climate solutions and
COIN platform networks nicely complemented his prodigious efforts furthering TIR
concepts and opportunities.
My particular contributions in preparation of the TIR Strategic document, in addition
to documenting pathways to a 100 percent renewable powered economy (without
biofuels, nuclear power or new hydrodams), was in detailing the importance of COIN
platform networks. Face-to-face meetings among and between the participants in
what Europeans refer to as the quadruple helix of innovation systems3, combined
with a deep-dive Strategy document, are invaluable, but must be seen as the first
major leg of an ongoing, sustained dialogue during implementation of actions.
Imperative is anchoring this process within a COIN platform network that serves a
multitude of purposes, the most important of which is the capacity to scale (Choudary
2016). A platform network’s unique asset of scalability will prove immeasurably
valuable in interconnecting cities, campuses, companies and citizens across the globe
to share, exchange, and continually raise the bar of what is achievable.
My ongoing efforts in this direction involve incorporating the cutting edge research
and initiatives of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) visualization tools
as integral parts of a COIN platform (in addition to access by smartphone and
laptops). Interactive VR/AR offer the capability of visualizing complex, complicated,
and difficult topics for many people unable or unwilling to tackle dense documents
and numerical analyses. At the same time, it allows for teams of players to
collaboratively innovate by sharing their collective intelligence.
This is already proving to be of considerable value for conducting the BIMStorm
process evolving over the past three decades by leading architecture practitioners
like Kimon Onuma, FAIA. Integrated, as well as sequential, teams of architects,
engineers, construction firms, facility managers, procurement and inventory
management administrators, and financial officers, are able to view the entire
lifecycle building process from design and budgeting through construction,
commissioning, operation, restoration, and end-of-life reuse on one platform
3 The quadruple helix innovation system is an interaction model comprised of representatives from
government, business, academic, and civil stakeholders. See: Cavallini et al (2016) Using the
Quadruple Helix Approach to Accelerate the Transfer of Research and Innovation Results to Regional
Growth, European Union, Committee of the Regions; and Carayannis and Campbell (2009) ‘Mode 3’
and ‘Quadruple Helix’: toward a 21st century fractal innovation ecosystem, Int. J. Technology
Management, Vol. 46, Nos. 3/4.

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network. The California Community College system, and U.S. military health facilities
are two of the largest institutions in the world applying this open source, multi-factor
authentication, cost saving, sharing platform.
I am currently in the process of co-developing a demo of how a VR climate control
room can allow individuals and teams to visualize energy and climate solutions at the
campus and city scales.
IDEA CREATION, IDENTIFYING & DRIVING BOLD NEW IDEAS
One abiding insight from 45 years of immersion in the overlapping fields of energy
services, ecological sustainability, environmental externalities, and the digitalization
of the economy, is the continuous surfacing of creative innovations and bold new
ideas. My efforts and cultivated expertise have concentrated on going beyond
isolated silos and narrowly defined and artificially constrained perspectives (whether
disciplines, institutions, policies), to look for cross-connecting and interlinked
opportunities among innovations that simultaneously address two or more pressing
challenges (e.g., energy-water-food-land-biodiversity-climate-pollution-security
nexus). It has been, and remains, a highly productive, rewarding, and energizing
pursuit.
Citations available upon request: totten.michael@gmail.com