Affordable renewable energy is still science fiction, right? Dead wrong, says Dr. Eric Martinot, and he should know. A former senior energy specialist with the World Bank in Washington, DC from 1999 to 2003 and affiliated with the Worldwatch Institute, Eric created an annual compendium on renewable power in 2005 called the REN21 Renewables Global Status Report. The author of that and dozens of other influential publications on renewable and sustainable energy since 1990, he’s also an editorial board member of the journal Energy Policy. Currently a senior research director with the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies in Tokyo and teaching fellow at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, Eric shuttles between Japan, China, Europe and New Zealand researching real-life examples of renewable energy to track our long-term energy future to 2050. He’ll be spending most of 2013 and 2014 on a global tour speaking about his pioneering REN21 Renewables Global Futures Report, issued in January 2013.