As the energy crisis escalates -- and the price of gas and electricity with it -- a new book just released from MIT Press predicts that in the next two decades, solar will become the cheapest energy source for most applications, and will be widely adopted by consumers in both the developed and developing worlds.

Travis Bradford, president and founder of the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development, will be in San Francisco on September 12 at 6 p.m. in the Thoreau Center for Sustainability to discuss his new book, Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry.

This is Bradford's second stop on a multi-city tour across the U.S. to meet with interested individuals and businesses, energy industry representatives, policy makers and renewable energy advocates.

In Solar Revolution, Bradford analyzes the solar industry's market, history, economic characteristics, and considers the pros and cons of other renewable energy sources including hydroelectricity, wind, geothermal, biomass and nuclear.

Bradford points out that solar energy already cost-effectively supplies a portion of utilities' needs for daytime electricity, and notes its competitiveness is growing rapidly. Secondly, photovoltaics, distributed on a small scale instead of on today's industrial-size electricity grids, will begin to unravel the economies of scale that Edison's electricity transmission created over the last century.