Green@Google: Jane Woodward March 13, 2009

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Jane Woodward visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss the energy landscape. This event took place on February 26, 2009, as part of the Green@Google series.

How do we use energy? Why should we care about energy? How about a revolution? These three core questions form the foundation to explore the broad topic of energy, that ubiquitous word we largely with the services that we really care about: getting people and things from place to place, providing high temperature heat for industrial processes, keeping building occupants warm or cool, having the ability to illuminate, compute, pump water, and grow and process food. Harnessing energy resources to deliver these services today, however, has its costs, both private and public.

This talk will benchmark where we stand today and the expected future path for energy use if we evolve to something much more sustainable than the historical trajectory would suggest. Several revolutions in our fundamental energy systems will be described that are being driven by the urgent need to address current climate change, import dependence, and efficient resource utilization risks we face today.

Jane Woodward is the founder and CEO of MAP, an investment firm focused on natural gas and renewable energy royalty interests in the onshore US. She has taught classes on energy and environment at Stanford University for twenty years as a consulting professor. She serves on the following Advisory Boards/Councils: Stanford University's GSB, Stanford's Precourt Center for Energy Efficiency, and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy; and she serves as a Trustee Associate of the AAPG Foundation.