Dealing with victor's history in renewable energy education for transportation applications

摘要

Renewable energy utilization in transportation applications (RES-T) belongs to the key fields of climate change mitigation. RES-T education is needed for evading climate crisis, but it faces serious obstacles. Low awareness among the general public and technology professionals of opportunities offered by RES-T technologies is attributable to various non-technical issues. One of these issues is misrepresentation of crude oil based fuels in many historical accounts of transportation technology evolution. It is argued that this phenomenon has resemblance to the famous bias found in war history, the tendency to write history from the perspective of the victors. In this case victors are companies instead of armies. However, although the end result is similar, the process is different.It is usually not recognized in relevant educational curriculums that all transport modes were originally RES-T powered and RES-T technologies have always been utilized in varying degrees, also today. The relevant educational curriculums also tend to ignore both technological and environmental advantages offered by RES-T, in comparison with current conventional transportation technologies. Victor's history bias requires immediate attention as one of the core challenges underlying these educational problems.