Al Gore: Super grid is critical to combating the climate crisis  

C;eantech.com reports that Al Gore has been talking up smart and super grids at a recent venture capital conference - Al Gore: Super grid is critical to combating the climate crisis.

The used-to-be next president of the United States, as he calls himself, is all for putting a price on carbon, a cap and trade system, and overcoming political obstacles to combat climate change.

But what the American environmentalist and venture capitalist Al Gore—who has won everything from the Nobel Peace Prize to an Academy Award and Grammy for his documentary and book "The Inconvenient Truth"—came to San Mateo, Calif., yesterday to talk about was the super grid.

He said the smart grid is "at the heart" of developing renewable energy and empowering people to get to higher levels of efficiency.

Gore was the final keynote speaker at VentureBeat’s GreenBeat 2009 conference, focused on the smart grid. He also managed to plug the release of his new book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis,” which outlines what he thinks needs to happen to achieve a super grid—a revamped electrical grid aimed at saving energy, diversifying energy sources, and decarbonizing power use to slow global warming.

“This roller coaster is about to crash, and we are in the front car,” he said, of America's dependence on foreign oil and dwindling new discoveries of it.