By Divya Erram
Special to The Herald

Hot topic: The world’s environment in peril, and the opportunities that come with a sea change in how Americans — and Benicians — get and use their energy.

Since 1986, Benicia resident Grant Cooke has been talking and writing about the evolution of the global economy from carbon-based to green energy-based. Now Cooke has written a book on the subject with Nobel Peace Prize winner Woodrow Clark III, “Global Energy Innovation: Why America Must Lead” (Praeger Press, 2011), scheduled for release this fall.

“This book is particularly important for the next generation,” Cooke, 64, told The Herald on Wednesday. “They will be forced to be more highly skilled than any generation in history, and there are fewer and fewer resources to go to them to develop that knowledge and those skills.”

Energy-efficient systems

A 20-year veteran of public relations and marketing with Contra Costa Community Colleges, Cooke “got to a point in my life where, if I didn’t do something else, I would be stuck in a void.”

He found his niche when he joined a group that, with help from a grant from PG&E, created a company called Intergy, which specialized in marketing, design and implementation of energy efficiency programs.

“With my skills as a writer I developed a knack to design and create large energy efficiency programs for California, New York and Texas,” he said.

That ended in December 2009 when Intergy was bought by Willdan Energy Solutions. Cooke left to create, with John Mahoney, Sustainable Energy Associates, a mechanical energy firm focused on developing and managing projects in the field of renewable and efficient energy.

Meeting of minds

During his time with Intergy, Cooke met Woodrow Clark. Both had helped write a program for Southern California Edison on how to develop a model for a sustainable community.

“I did a big project for California Energy Commission with a grant for the Los Angeles Community Colleges District with Woody. At L.A. Trade Tech we created a complete wing that is sustainable, and where students are training for jobs in the ‘green industry,’” Cooke said.

Clark, an economist and environmental scientist, had worked with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; he edited the report in 2007 that substantiated climate change was being caused by human activity — which eventually made him a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

The American lifestyle

“In the future, jobs will be knowledge-based, not manufacturing,” Cooke said. “America is slowly turning toward a new type of economy. And if the country is smart, it will embrace the green economy and use it as a driver to advance in energy efficiency.

“Woodrow and I recognized that the rest of the world has already begun to change. Europe and Asia started about two to three decades ago. And all these developing countries, like India and China, want to be America. The two things they want are cars and animal protein. What they really want is the American lifestyle and the American lifestyle is a carbon-intensive lifestyle,” Cooke said.

Cooke and Clark’s collaboration looks at the roots of industrialization, starting with the Industrial Revolution. Labor as we know it, Cooke said, went from being done by human hands to a time when “the work was done by machines. From then on, the world has be-come more dependent on energy.”

That energy needs a source. Whale oil, used for kerosene, could only last so long, Cooke said. Hence humanity’s drive to extract fossil fuels like natural gas, coal and oil.

“It has become apparent to me that there’s only so much oil in the world. I remember the time when gas was 25 cents a gallon — now it’s heading toward five dollars,” he said. “We’re creating a situation where the supply is in decline and the demand is skyrocketing. We’re at a point in history where all the oil that’s been discovered is all the oil in the world.”

‘America Must Take Action’

The world’s population is about 7 billion. By 2050 it’s projected to be 9 billion — and “the more crowded it is, the hotter the planet will become,” Cooke said.

The U.S. needs to find a new area of growth for jobs from the green economy, he said. America has an aging population that doesn’t want change — “but to reinvigorate ourselves, capture the scientific innovative thinking and the entrepreneurial spirit of past decades, we must be willing to
push for renewable ideas in a green economy.

“Americans are really behind on the environmentally advanced generation. As a nation, we don’t even have a functional energy policy,” Cooke said. “But we aren’t the only ones to blame.”

Benicia and the green economy

Cooke sees the conversation heating up everywhere — even at the local level, in his hometown of Benicia.

“Benicia is a small town caught up in a national problem. There’s no easy answer. It has to come from the leadership. It has to come from the recognition by the city and the nation that there’s a better way to have economic development.

“After September 11, America has been angst ridden and depressed. America used to be ‘can do’, feeling almost invincible — a major superpower that couldn’t be touched. 9/11 happened and suddenly America didn’t feel as invincible. It created a sense of ‘can’t do’ instead of ‘can do’. But the inventiveness is still here.”

Locally, “The whole Bay Area is shifting to a knowledge-based society. Livermore has embraced it, Silicon Valley started it, and Benicia can be a part of that process if it chooses to,” he said.

He calls Benicia “an idyllic community” and says there’s no other spot like it in the Bay Area. “It’s a quiet town with historic roots. It went from an agrarian community to a fishing community to a suburban one. Now it’s a refinery and industrial shipping economy.

“We’re perfect for a slow, well-developed green economy, but new ideas will come in a variety of fashions. Benicia is already gaining green businesses like Pacific Ozone, which is the most innovative manufacturer of ozone, an eco-friendly cleaning process.

“We have to get new ideas and economic drivers to power Benicia and its economy.”