Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Fourteen: Rethinking the Energy System 217small wind machines could link them all to its user(s) by a long transmissionline; or many solar collectors could deliver their collective heat output via anextensive network institutionally similar to present gas and electric grids. (Inprinciple, a single small unit could also be made remote from its user[s] by puttingit at the other end of a long transmission line, but there would generallybe no reason to do this.) An assemblage of many solar concentrating dishesmay be local if it is either dispersed near scattered users or clustered near clusteredusers. Local does not necessarily mean renewable (for example, locallyused natural gas wells or even—in some Swedish proposals—nuclear heat reactorscould perhaps be local). Conversely, renewable systems can be centralized,as in “power-tower,” ocean-thermal-electric, biomass-plantation, solarpower-satellite,and similar schemes—although it is not obvious why oneshould wish to gather up an inherently dispersed energy flux (sunlight) intoone place in order to be put to the expense of distributing it again to dispersedusers. Locality is a property intermediate between the purely technical qualitiesdescribed above and the more sociologically oriented ones listed below.•User-controllability. Many energy users are concerned with the extent towhich they can choose and control the energy systems important to their lives.This concern extends both to immediate decisions about end-use patterns—forexample, being able to turn a light on and off at one’s own convenience preservesindividual autonomy—and to the wider question of the political processby which decisions about the energy system are made: whether they are participatoryand pluralistic or dominated by a central technical elite.• Comprehensibility. Whether people can control a technology dependspartly on whether they can understand it. A system can be understandable toits user even if it is technically very sophisticated. Most people could not builda pocket calculator and do not know exactly what goes on inside it, but forthem as users it is a tool rather than a machine: they run it, not vice versa.• Dependency. The “poles” of this spectrum of economic, political, and psychologicalrelationships might be multinational corporations on the one handand do-it-yourself, appropriate, or “vernacular” technologies—things that peoplecan do for themselves—on the other. Dependency expresses users’ feeling thattheir own interests may not be identical with those of energy providers. A highdegree of dependency might be characteristic of : a “black box” energy sourcewhich is designed, made, and installed by some remote and unaccountable institution;an energy source which a user is humiliatingly unable to understand,repair, adjust, or modify; or a source whose presence or price are beyond users’control. Supplying energy oneself or getting it through more familiar (henceusually more local) institutions would incur a different but probably more manageabledependency. Dependency is also related to breadth of choice: buying