Let's just think for a second about how everything has changed in the last 50 years.

Just think about it. Cellphones, computers, the internet.

Richard Silkman thinks about this all the time.

Things changed. And if you woke up Rifam Winkle

from 1965 and put him today he wouldn't have a clue as to what our

communication system does. But Silkman doesn't do communications.

Silkman is in the energy business,

and in the energy business, it's a different story.

If you woke him up and showed him the electric system,

he'd recognize it immediately.

It says the same thing that I lived with in 1965.

Yeah, it's got a few new nuclear plants and maybe we're using a little bit more

aluminum than copper, but, geez, the same thing, but the same.

And a few years ago, Richard Silkman and some of his colleagues started a side project, trying

to update our energy system for the 21st century and make it so that if Rip Van Winkle woke

up and took a look around him, he'd be hard-pressed to recognize what he was seeing. But the energy horizon is foggy.

So today we're taking a deep dive into Richard Silkman's side project

to find out whether we're headed for an energy revolution

or whether maybe after another 50 years Rip Van Winkle still might wake up and say,

oh, this. I recognize this.

From New Hampshire Public Radio, this is outside in,

the show about the natural world and how we use it.

...