Tuesday, September 15, 2015

2016 Breakthrough Paradigm Award!

I've been awarded the 2016 Breakthrough Paradigm Award -- here is the nice letter I received from Shellenberger and Nordhaus:

  We are pleased to inform you that you have been awarded the 2016 Breakthrough Paradigm Award. This annual prize honors those whose work has made a major contribution to realizing a future where all the world’s inhabitants can enjoy secure, free, prosperous, and fulfilling lives on an ecologically vibrant planet.
You were chosen in recognition of your path-breaking scholarship and public service on clean energy, energy systems, and innovation. Your influential text Sustainable Energy – without the hot air continues to be an invaluable resource to the popular and policy conversations on climate change. Your commitment to accessibility, both at the sentence level and in your efforts to make your books available for free, distinguishes you among many scholars and academics working today.
We are especially pleased to honor your five years of public service at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, and your work steering Britain toward one of the most ambitious and pragmatic climate policy trajectories in the world.
Your work has had a significant influence on our thinking about energy technologies and transitions, including on how we train our junior fellows to understand the cost, impact, and scale of energy transitions. Your work has made the global energy conversation less dogmatic and moved the world closer to more rational and effective action.
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We hope the prize helps expand the valence of your work, introducing new scholars both young and old to Sustainable Energy – without the hot air. Of all the “Great Transformations” achieved by societies, energy transformations are perhaps the greatest and most central. You understand these transformations better than almost anyone living, and your writings will no doubt be read far and wide in the decades to come.
We offer our congratulations and deepest thanks for your inspiring work, and we look forward to meeting you soon.
Sincerely,
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus