Let There Be Light

Providing electricity to unlit and unstable parts of the globe is crucial to jump-starting development, improving the environment, and assisting fragile states that ferment many of today's security threats. Rachel Kleinfeld and Drew Sloan's new book, Let There Be Light, shows the failures of centralized electricity to meet these challenges---and describes how distributed, renewable energy such as solar and wind power can work. But, Kleinfeld and Sloan argue, it is not enough to harness the power of the elements. To scale, distributed energy must harness the power of the market. Kleinfeld will present the major challenges that have impeded distributed energy's success, and describe the roles development donors, social entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, the military, and the business world can play to make lighting the developing world a reality.