Like 360,000 other customers in the Washington, D.C. area, I lost power during last week’s snowstorm. This was no blizzard, no “snowpocalypse,” just 5-10 inches of wet snow, and yet it wiped our electricity for a large portion of residents in the region.
Now I have young children, and being without heat in the middle of winter, and without lights at night, and without a refrigerator – well, to call it a hassle would be an understatement. As far as work went, I took a conference call in my 58 degree house (the thermostat ticked down every hour) until my phone battery died. We spent the night at a very generous neighbor’s house.
An event like this makes you realize how much we take cheap, abundant electricity for granted, and how dependent we are on it. It also makes you realize how fragile our electricity system is. With our entire economy dependent on power, outages cause large economic losses.
Forget air pollution, climate change, mountain top removal coal mining, gas drilling on our public lands or the myriad other problems of our dependence on dirty energy sources. At the end of the day, concentrated power stations transmitting electricity over thousands of miles of cables are prone to outages – which means economic losses and personal hardship, even loss of life and other health effects (particularly for vulnerable populations) in extreme heat or cold.
That’s why I want to see “distributed” renewable energy – energy that doesn’t give your utility complete control over whether and when energy is available to you. Imagine if all the shingles in your roof transformed solar energy into electricity, and a third of that electricity was stored in batteries for use when it was dark. Imagine your house, your heating, cooling, and all your electrical appliances and devices used ten times less energy than they do today. A little snow storm (or other weather event) wouldn’t affect you.
There has been a lot of talk lately about making America “energy independent.” Well, distributed energy makes every American energy independent. Talk about freedom! Distributed energy would make us more secure, safer, protect our economy from shocks and provide a whole new industrial sector to provide jobs that can’t be outsourced. Someone overseas can’t install or maintain solar panels on your house. Only someone in driving distance can.
This vision is not science fiction. We already have the vast majority of the technology needed. But there are a lot of barriers to making this happen, from federal policies down to local zoning ordinances. The first step though is creating the demand. So demand that your city council member, your state assembly representative, your U.S. Senator and your local power company make distributed energy a reality.
Learn more:
See how YOU can use less energy and be more energy efficient.
Read how Defenders is working to build a clean energy future that’s smart from the start.
Defenders of Wildlife leads the pack when it comes to protecting wild animals and plants in their natural communities.
Stewart Brand came out some years ago in support of nuclear energy as safe, efficient and able to meet our growing energy needs. As co-publisher of the old Whole Earth Catalogue I believe he has a background to think this decision through and a name to push it.
Next issue….with Exxon-Mobile (and others?) sequestering CO2 in below sea floor spaces from which they have withdrawn oil and gas I told now that our oceans are becoming abnormally acidified. This probably could have been predicted. Can you comment?
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Noah Matson Reply:
February 4th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Hi Fern,
Oil and coal companies are trying to figure out how they can keep spewing carbon pollution in the face of future carbon regulation – besides fighting the regulations themselves, they are looking to massive carbon sequestration technologies to save the day. Already oil and gas companies typically inject CO2 into their wells to increase production. The theory goes that this could also be a valuable long-term carbon storage technique. The reality is we just don’t know enough right now to understand how permanent long-term storage of CO2 underground and under the sea floor will be. Capturing and pumping CO2 also requires energy, so you could have a situation where you are burning fossil fuels, producing CO2, to sequester CO2.
Ocean acidification is something different. All the CO2 we have already thrown into the atmosphere is interacting with the ocean. The ocean has absorbed an enormous amount of CO2, which is lessening global warming in the atmosphere, but as any of you remember you high school chemistry class, when you blow CO2 into water, it creates carbonic acid, driving down the ocean’s ph. This is bad news for marine life. Many marine species, corals chief among them, use calcium carbonate for their shells – as the ocean gets more acidic, these species will be unable to form their shells. No shells. No Shellfish. Including tiny zooplankton species that form the basis of the food chain.
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