I am pleased to announce that client Tom Stoner’s new book, Small Change, Big Gains: Reflections of a Global Energy Entreprenuer was released with a reading at the Boulder Book Store on Wednesday, October 2. The Boulder resident spoke to a large and interested audience about the research on climate change that underpins his book. His appeal to a shared planetary fate is uniquely grounded in the author’s extensive experience as an energy executive.
In his book, he introduces climate change economics and provides recommendations on how to develop feasible pathways to a sustainable energy future. He takes a unique look at the problem, examining the global energy supply as if it was a single portfolio of assets, and shows it is possible to align the interests of energy investors, suppliers, users, and environmental stewards. He explains how we–as business professionals, students, consumers, and citizens–can transform our current energy system into a system that creates new business opportunities, promotes environmental health, and broadens our understanding of wealth.
Thomas H. Stoner, Jr. writes from the perspective of an energy executive with 25 years of experience in the C-Suite, in the boardroom, and as an investor in renewable energy assets. After graduating from Hampshire College (B.A.) and the London School of Economics (M.S.) in the 1980s, Tom Stoner spent his professional career leading three companies in the clean technology space, including one of the original CleanTech venture funds backed by international development banks, including the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), a division of the Inter-American Development Bank. Tom served as CEO of two publicly traded companies: Econergy International PLC, a renewable energy independent power producer (IPP) traded on the London AIM market; and Evergreen Energy, a clean coal technology company traded on the NYSE Arca Exchange.He illustrates clearly how climate change and resource use are not just economic and environmental issues, but also existential ones. He likens humanity’s relative inaction to the climate crisis–a situation he terms ‘environmental suicide’–to his own experience as a survivor of suicide. In a deeply personal account, Mr. Stoner shares his feelings of responsibility for another’s self-destructive choice, asking, “What could I have done differently. ” Today, he asserts that we must all seek to answer a different question to help humanity avoid environmental suicide: “What can we do differently?”
Small Change, Big Gains was published by Greenleaf Book Group Press. The book has received endorsements from key players in the energy industry, as well as some strong reviews in business and climate change experts. Foreward.Reviews noted: “Stoner adeptly illustrates how climate-change deniers have eroded support for preventative measures by calling science into question.”
Stoner will be appearing at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2013. For more information about the book and the project, visit www.smallchangebiggains.com.
