ROBERT STONER

Director of the Tata Center for Technology and Design at MIT

Deputy Director of Science and Technology of the MIT Energy Initiative

President at International Conservation Fund

Robert has spent much of his life living in and studying Africa as it experiences electrification. Like Sossina, he sees African countries in the early stages of grid development as opportunities to get things right. He makes a great case for electrifying developing countries with microgrids and then tying them together, rather than trying to work backward as we are currently doing in the United States. African and Indian electricity could roll out as communications did for them: without wires, with less infrastructure, and without fossil fuels.

Robert is also invested in energy access in such countries. He, like Dan Kammen, understands that energy access is the number one obstacle when it comes to the disparity of economic opportunity in countries like India versus the United States.

“If you want to create an industry of microgrid builders and enable people in rural areas to have cheaper power you've got to figure out where those microgrids really are more economic. Where are those communities where it's less expensive to build a local generator than to connect them to the grid? Where are the communities and which communities are densely enough populated for you to be able to string relatively short runs of wire between the houses to distribute the energy.”