A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only.
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with clean renewable energy, accelerate North Africa’s development and knit together two worlds that seem
to be racing apart. It has to be said that early experiments in North Africa in 2005 experienced difficulties.
Combined heat and power Combined heat and power, either at large installations such as power stations or
in smaller community, residential or office developments, can also make a contribution by avoiding wasted
heat and energy, especially when the heat and power are derived from renewable sources.
Sustainable Power Networks and Smart National or Regional Grids We need to re-engineer our electricity
distribution grid to accommodate small and medium scale, local, combined heat and power generation and
power from domestic and office roofs. Current national grids were created in a different age for different
needs and sources of power. They can be modernised and expanded for moving electricity from where it is
generated to where it is needed through a unified national smart grid. The grid is smart in the sense that it
can monitor and balance both the load and the fluctuating power from diverse sources such as sun, wind and
wave from different areas, accommodate distributed energy from local areas and, in the future, capitalise on
a massive national fleet of clean, plug-in cars. Such a new grid would encompass both the long-distance,
high-voltage transmission lines and the lower voltage distribution systems that connect the power to
customers. Updating grids will save wastage and money, increase reliability and protect consumers from
outages, and make possible a clean electricity system. It will move renewable power from where it is
generated to wherever it’s needed, whenever it’s needed. Investing in modernisation of the grid will create
thousands of jobs for workers. Such schemes are being considered in North America, Europe, the European
North Sea area and could be applied to solar powering the Mediterranean area, embracing European, Middle
Eastern and North African countries and, for that matter many, other regions of the world.
Smart meters help householders manage their consumption better and save the cost of visits by the meter
man, or woman. Smart appliances At the GridWise lab, a refrigerator, washer, dryer, dishwasher, water
heater and even coffeemaker are all doing their bit for the national power grid.
Massive savings could be made by turning off unnecessary lights at night in cities throughout the world,
especially late at night. Large savings can also be made by reducing energy use and heat loss by various
means including constructing carbon neutral new buildings and retrofitting existing buildings which are by far
the biggest challenge for the nation.
The most sensible approach seems to be a combination of approaches, reflecting the geography and
ecology of different regions or areas, taking into account the amount of wind, nearby seas and the existence
of supplies of wood or biomass. Large power stations supplying through a national grid waste two-thirds of
the heat and energy they generate. Smaller more local power stations are able to supply the heat they
generate to neighbouring buildings. The following is a summary of the main technologies, for large and small
scale application, in roughly descending order of size:
Heat and power
Concentrated solar power (CSP) technology in sunny countries.
Pan-European offshore electricity network to even out fluctuations in North Sea wind and wave
turbines.
Wind turbines, on land and increasingly at sea, wave, tide and solar PV power.
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