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

Chapter Sixteen: Inherently Resilient Energy Supplies 271two-thirds of the energy in the fuel in order to make a high-quality energyform. If that quality is not used to advantage—if, for example, the electricity isused for space-conditioning—then the whole conversion process was a waste ofmoney and fuel. Because this book takes seriously the economic criterion ofproviding each energy service in the cheapest way, and because the special useswhich can use electricity to advantage are already met twice over by existingpower plants, 14 most “appropriate” renewable energy sources provide heat orvehicular fuels rather than electricity. For the same reason, most are wellmatched in size to the tasks for which the energy is needed.Renewable sources are often described as “new,” “unconventional,” or“exotic.” None of these labels is accurate. To be sure, many renewable energytechnologies have been greatly improved by modern materials and design science.But this is only the latest stage in an evolutionary process stretchingback for hundreds, even thousands, of years. 15 Such technologies as passivesolar design, windpower, and biomass alcohols were well known in rathersophisticated forms millennia ago. Solar concentrators were used by the VestalVirgins to light the sacred temple flame in the seventh century B.C., and setthe sails of an enemy fleet alight in the Battle of Syracuse (the only significantknown military use of solar technology). Flat-plate collectors are two centuriesold; photovoltaics and solar heat engines, over a century.Repeatedly, many solar technologies became respectably mature only to becut off by the discovery of apparently cheap deposits of fuels, whether woodin the Roman Empire, coal in industrializing Britain, or oil in our own time.Each time, as scarcity and a sense of insecurity eventually returned, therenewable sources were reinvented. The 1970s may become best known tofuture historians as the time when renewable energy finally re-emerged tostay. The technologies surveyed in this chapter are the fruits of the first decadeof modern technologists’ serious, concerted attention to the problems andpotential of renewable energy.This analysis has consistently stated that appropriate renewable sources—notall renewable sources—offer economic and security advantages. Unfortunately,the overwhelming emphasis in federal renewable programs to date has been onthe least economic and least resilient renewables, especially the central-electricones. The historic reasons for this tendency to “make solar after the nuclearmodel,” 16 as two veteran observers remarked, are rooted not in economicrationality but in mere force of habit. Believing that solar contributions wouldbe small and far in the future, the research managers sought to carry out theirself-fulfilling prophecy by emphasizing the least attractive designs, those makingthe least saleable form of energy. They assumed that the desired product wasbaseload electricity, even though there is no economic market (as utilities are