Energy for Sustainable Society

How Was This Book Born?

We were college students in the 1970s when the energy crisis affected every aspect of life in some way. We grew accustomed to continuously increasing energy prices, scheduled electric outages, and shortages of many industrial products. At the beginning of our careers, the Three Mile Island accident weakened our faith in nuclear power. When the Chernobyl disaster spread radiation over Europe, we were living in the Black Sea area where radioactive contamination seriously affected the agriculture. In our lifetimes, coalmine accidents killed many people, and numerous environmental disasters originating from wars, deep‐water oil drilling, and tanker accidents contaminated the oceans. In the meantime, we have witnessed public concerns and debates on windfarm development and hydraulic fracking for unconventional oil recovery.

We have pursued our dreams of sustainability by conducting several renewable energy projects while living in the coal‐mining regions of Western Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. With a modest funding provided by Maryland Energy Administration in 2006, we found an opportunity to install a residential‐scale wind and solar powered hybrid generation system on the Frostburg State University (FSU) campus to increase the public awareness about renewable energy. As part of this project, we established the Renewable Energy Center and organized the “Renewable Energy Symposium” at FSU. We received funding from the Appalachian Regional Commission ...