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

Chapter Seventeen: Achieving Resilience 299legislative branches, the programs and plans which affect energy vulnerability—ineither direction—tend to be specialized, scattered, and uncoordinated.In summary, the most fruitful federal role in promoting energy preparednesswould be to raise the consciousness, expertise, and public accountabilityof those federal agencies whose decisions are increasing energy vulnerability;to identify and coordinate federal action on the detailed gaps in federal planning(such as grid integration); and to spread information on the specifics ofachieving greater energy resilience, especially by encouraging locally basedprograms addressed to local security and economic concerns, drawing on theexperience described below. Distributing, as did FEMA’s predecessor, instructionson how to use a truck as an improvised electric generator 15 is useful if allelse has failed. But distributing instructions on how to make buildings and factoriesefficient, harness renewable sources in the service of energy preparedness,improvise efficiency and renewable technologies out of locally availablematerials, and integrate alternative energy devices in the pattern that is mostsupportive of preparedness goals would not only save energy and money allthe time but would also be the best insurance against ever having to hook upthat truck generator. At present, such federal energy preparedness programsas still exist are concerned with managing curtailments. To go further—to offerAmericans the informational tools they need in order to prevent curtailmentsby building each day an ever more resilient energy system—will require a basicreorientation in government thinking. It will require that, instead of relying ona Federal Emergency Management Agency to help pick up the pieces after adisaster, we seek to equip the nation so that energy emergencies needing managementare unlikely to arise.It will also require a healthy skepticism toward the dogma that a nationalproblem can only be solved at a national level. In a country as large anddiverse as the United States, any issue aggregated to a national level tendsthereby to become all but unmanageable. Much of the current federal trendtowards devolving choice back to a state and local level wisely recognizes thatunique local circumstances can often be best dealt with by people who knowthem in detail—if the will and the resources to do so are there. This may notwork for every social problem. But the evidence of recent years is that itworks very well in energy policy. The energy problem is already being solvedfrom the bottom up, not from the top down, and Washington will be the lastto know. This is not surprising, for the national energy problem is made ofbillions of small pieces which are mainly perceived, chosen, and regulated ata local level. Institutional barriers—ten thousand obsolete building codes,obsolete lending regulations and utility practices, and the like—are generally atthe state, county, or local level. The rest of this chapter, therefore, is devoted