Description:

The U.S. energy landscape is rapidly changing. As the cost of wind and solar power drops, allowing these energy sources to compete against coal- and natural gas-fired power plants, pressure is mounting to develop an electric grid that can sustain more renewables and deliver their power to more homes and businesses throughout the country.

In “Superpower: One Man’s Quest to Transform American Energy,” Wall Street Journal reporter Russell Gold chronicles one man’s mission to improve the U.S. electric grid by building a network of transmission lines to connect solar and wind hotbeds to areas of the country where demand for energy is high. Experts in the field broadly agree that this grid integration is the key to unlocking the clean, affordable grid of the future. The book provides deep insights on the challenges of achieving such a system and the opportunities ahead.

Join EPIC as we host Russell Gold for a special conversation with Michael Greenstone about “Superpower,” the characters and lessons it details, and the future of the U.S. electricity grid.
Seminar Series

Event Date: October 15, 2019 5:45 PM to 7:15 PM

Location:
Saieh Hall for Economics, Room 146
5757 S. University Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637

Cost: Free

Contacts: Marguerite Huber, mkhuber@uchicago.edu

Speaker Bio: Russell Gold is an award-winning investigative journalist at The Wall Street Journal. He started his journalism career at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Antonio Express-News. In 2000, he joined The Wall Street Journal and covered Texas and economics, before switching to energy in 2002. His reporting has taken him to five continents and above the Arctic Circle two times. In 2010, he was part of the Wall Street Journal team that covered the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. The Journal’s work was awarded the Gerald Loeb Award for best business story of the year and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting. In 2020, he will inaugurate a new beat the Journal: Climate change and business. His book, The Boom, was longlisted for the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the year prize in 2014. Superpower was published in June 2019. He earned a B.A. in history from Columbia University in 1993. He lives in Austin with his wife and two children.