Infographic – History of Renewable Energy InfoGraphic
We at 2GreenEnergy are on a quest to introduce the basic concepts of renewable energy to newcomers to the field, and, to that end, we’ve begun to create a series of “infographics,” providing a few essential concepts at a glance. Here’s a one-pager we did, depicting a brief history of each of five main types of clean energy. We’re hoping that this puts a few central concepts into perspective for folks.
Hi Craig,
Missing OTEC, same principle as geothermal, only the thermal sources inverted, and from the seas.
Regards,
Vicente Fachina
Brazil
Dear 2GreenEnergy readers:
creating this series of “infographics,” providing a few essential concepts was very important to all us.
“Emerging Technologies” these are called, and naysayers say “when these can prove viable with out subsidies then they will buy into them” I then tell them that Oil gets subsidies and they say “that is because environmentalists make it too expensive to find new locations for Oil Wells. My point is this basic education is needed on Fox News. And Grammar Schools and in City Parks instead of War “Successes”
My intention is not to lower this Blog to a pissing contest, but I wish Paul Harvey’s rest of the story” was this.
Trainer for Green Plumbers, Greg Chick
Craig, your list so far is just “supply-side” stuff. Recall that Amory Lovins of Rocky Mtn Institute has become infamous for his “Negawatts are cheaper than megawatts” phrase. By avoiding or reducing energy supplies whether conventional or renewable, we free up and render more useful the supplies we do have, whether conventional or renewable. This is a very important recognition since right now we’re growing demand for new energy supplies far faster than we are or can expect to implement RE, even far faster than most in conventional energy sectors know how to keep up with. So in all my courses, I teach that each of the following should be included among renewable energies:
Conservation: substituting manual or other non-energy-supply alternatives to perform tasks otherwise done by energy supplies whether conventional or renewable. For example, hang-drying laundry avoids use of a dryer whether the dryer is operated on grid power or PV. Another example is walking or riding a bike instead of driving a car whether car is powered by gas, ethanol, waste oil or electricity. Daylight is a wonderful low-cost no-emissions source of light, a clear alternative to electric lights powered by any other kind of power whether conventional or RE. Conservation and opportunities to conserve do not run out, so are completely renewable. This is also the lowest-cost energy resource available in most situations!
Efficiency: performing energy-using tasks with less energy supply. Good example is switching from energy guzzling incandescent bulbs to CFL or LED. Another is switching from energy guzzling desktop computers to notebook computers and other smaller computerized devices. Another is installing more insulation to reduce how much heating is needed, or replacing windows with higher R or different SHGC glazings to optimize passive solar or summer shade while minimizing conduction losses, thereby reducing how much energy supply is needed for HVAC, whether or not powered by conventional or RE. Efficiency does have its limits but is considered renewable in that it does not become exhausted. Heck, I think we could eliminate whopping amounts of almost silly energy consumption and demand by applying far more efficiencies than now!
Downsizing: reducing the scale of energy usage and demand by reducing the size of something. For example, reducing how much conditioned sf per person in a house or building almost always reduces per-person use and demand for HVAC and lighting energy supply. Choosing a lighter-weight vehicle similarly reduces supply energy since vehicle weight is the #1 or #2 criteria affecting energy supply demand and usage in most kinds of vehicles. Downsizing is completely renewable and redoable, also a great way to lower non-energy expenses while performing or achieving the same functions.
When we fail to focus on these opportunities prior to implementing your 5 types of RE supply, we end up paying much more for sometimes far larger energy systems than would be needed if conservation, efficiency and downsizing were implemented first. One ideal albeit radical example is how I implemented my own off-grid PV+batteries-powered office in KY. I first lowered my office electricity use by over 75% via conservation, efficiency and downsizing. That allowed me to install and comfortably live with a PV and batteries setup which was abt 80% smaller and less cost than the original system estimate prior to the 80% reduction. Did any of my conservation, efficiency and downsizing affect my company profits? No, not at all. I still do the same exact things in my office. When in 1992 I switched from a 30 mpg vehicle for my business travel to a 40+ mpg vehicle, did it reduce my company profits? No, not at all. In fact, because my fuel expenses went way down, my taxable income went up and I paid a little more in income and payroll taxes! No ill affect on my business itself.
In the RE sector, we need to sometimes struggle to avoid what we used to call “supply side economics”. This was a Reagan term applied to his tax and economic policies which were focused mostly on the supply-sides of our economy. His economic advisor used this rationale for why more supply-side benefits were given to the wealthier and bigger sources of money. Benefits would trickle down, they said. Now we know better. Benefits also ‘perk up’ when the demand-side focus is applied.
By lowering our energy demands, we reduce how much energy we need to buy and how much it costs to build our energy system capacities. Especially right now in a recession economy, it is not to our advantage to ignore lowest-cost methods to reduce usage and demand while examining or considering higher-cost energies.
I should add that my office PV + batteries system is 10 yrs old as of Nov 2011! On 2nd battery bank by now. Working great!
Hertz was a late-comer to PV. In 1839, French physicist Edmond Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effect when he exposed copper oxide electrodes in a liquid to light and produced an electric current. Also, Einstein won the Noble prize for his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1921 (not 1924).
I’d note as an aside that Henry Ford originally designed his vehicles to burn ethanol that was to be produced by the farmers he supported over the already too powerful big oil interests, and that a highly petroleum-interested Rockefeller was forcefully instrumental in the enactment of the Prohibition Act. This law ultimately failed in its “moral” pretext, but succeeded handily in completely preventing ethanol’s mass-production for fuel purposes for long enough to give the infrastructure for the delivery of gasoline a decisive head start (as well as a perhaps unintended boom time for organized crime). This is just one of a great many examples of wealthy and entrenched interests closing off the path to a better competitive technology.
ROTFL!
Well done! Another ridiculous conspiracy theory to put in the Pantheon of Conspiracy theories.
The popularity of ICE was mode possible by the introduction of the electric self starter by Cadillac.
Henry Ford did indeed contemplate a car engine that could run on peanut oil! However, ol’ Henry like everyone else, realised that the gasoline is vastly cheaper and more efficient.
Oh, It might come as a shock to you, but the 1919 Volstead Act only applied to the USA, the rest of the world, with older auto-industries, did not choose ethanol!
thank you. that was awesome. have a good valentines day.
Why would you not mention nuclear power? Any source that can supply clean energy for thousands of years on the fuel resources available, could quite reasonably be considered “renewable.” Besides that, the modern 4th generation of nuclear reactor designs like the IFR types, are as safe and safer than any other energy source. If you wish to say that there is too much danger from radiation, this view could be overturned easily by studying the issue more thoroughly. I hate to put it this way, but it is time that we wake up to the necessity of the nuclear choice. Please look into the nuclear choice more than you obviously have from your blogs on the subject. Thanks for listening.
In addition to the dangers (which wouldn’t necessarily disqualify nuclear as renewable), I would point out that uranium isn’t renewable. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium.
Uranium is only practical in the long term if we use breeder reactors that create plutonium (i.e. they create more fuel than they burn). The danger of making plutonium is that it is the best fuel for making atomic bombs. It’s also one of the most toxic materials know to man.
Why do you mention uranium and totally ignore thorium? The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) circumvents most of the objections to uranium reactors. They do not make plutonium and do not provide a path for making materials that can be used for weapons.
Moreover, while our current uranium reactors utilize only about 1% of the available energy in the uranium, the LFTR is able to utilize almost all of the energy available in the thorium fuel. And, thorium, which is now being discarded as waste from mining rare earth metals, is about 4 times as abundant as uranium.
Here are links to additional information on LFTR technology; there is no shortcut to learning about it. It will require considerable study to become adequately informed.
http://rt.com/usa/news/nuclear-energy-thorium-source-225/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU3cUssuz-U&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSzEjWz5T44&feature=player_embedded#at=16
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEpnpyd-jbw
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d9133b4906a1905%2C0
http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010090111506/life-and-science/energy-and-environment/thorium-cures-the-free-market.html
http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/962512/response_dont_dismiss_the_potential_of_thorium_nuclear_power.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/52d7bde6-e401-11e0-bc4e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1YsnndyMZ
Hi Craig,
I started a Sustainable Energy Club at my school (The City College of NY) recently and I’m trying to put together something like what you’ve just done here. I think it’s great!
But even though it’s for beginners, I would add a little more information (maybe as a dropdown or “more info”) so that readers who are interested can get a sense of some of the technical issues. And I also agree with John Robbins — conservation and efficiency can’t be neglected. Negawatts are huge in terms of keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere. Not to mention, conservation/efficiency is something big corporations can get behind (even if it’s only in their self-interest), but at least it gets the ball rolling in the right direction for everyone, while we figure out how to make wind, solar, etc. cost competitive with fossil fuels.
Love to see Tesla’s energy included in the Green Energy panorama. Hope governments will soon reveal it. And E-Cat ala Rossi!
The latest I’ve heard is that cold fusion may actually be real and could supply unlimited energy without any radioactivity. If you fuse the deuterium in one gallon of sea water, you can get the energy equivalent of 400 gallons of gasoline.
It’s true!
I use it to power my Unicorns tree house!
car/oil-why do we use cars for neighbourhood errands when a bike/trike (electric assist or otherwise) would do.
We’ve been brainwashed and we still subsidize the oil and auto industries?
Man shall be known by the clothes he wears and the car he drives- how moronic is this?
There are few days when I am not seen riding my light weight recumbent fairing protected trike.
You have made good points.
I use my car when other means of transportation are not practical. I ride my bicycle, walk, or ride a motorcycle which gets much better mileage than most cats.
It’s interesting that we are willing to spend millions of dollars on a freeway exchange but reluctant to subsidize public transportation which is much more energy efficient and would spare poor people from the burden of being forced to own a car.
The other thing abt RE these days compared to the past is that projects like my off-grid office (see above) are how we usually did it before all the whopping subsidies, also when most implementers, like me, were more well rounded in our approaches to converting to RE. I am utterly amazed and daunted by how many RE-wannabes these days want to go for RE before even doing minor lower-cost stuff to reduce energy consumption.
I got a recent call requesting a consultation abt improving passive solar performance of an existing home. Passive solar and solar heating aren’t even in your list above! Visited the house yesterday. Built in the 1970s, attic insulation only R-19 (vs current code R-38 or R-50 in my projects), leaky old sliding windows, etc. I had to explain both how to improve or add solar collection while also explaining that it makes little sense to bring in solar heat unless we improve the home’s ability to keep it in. Homeowner admitted she hadn’t thought of that, but seemed very pleased to hear my advice. Hopefully I’ll be rewarded with a new design contract to remodel her home with a passive solar addition! Even if not, I at least delivered correct advice and maybe she and her family will use it.
Another historic matter about solar which is not presented in your 5-RE history is the heirarchy of logical cost-effective application (considering all real costs, before subsidies). I teach this solar order to all my students, based on cost-effectiveness prior to subsidies:
1) daylighting
2) passive solar heating and cooling
3) solar water heating
4) solar electric
Was talking with a guy in Columbus OH a decade ago. He argued that I was misleading people to consider solar water heating before solar electric. So I quoted from one of my class slides:
“A grid-tied solar PV panel might be expected in our area (Ohio, KY, Indiana) to deliver upto 13 kWhs per sf per year to the grid. In comparison, a solar water heating panel might be expected to reduce electricity use by a grid-tied electric water heater by upto 55 kWh per sf per year.”
But the Columbus guy knew that PV systems in Ohio qualify for far more subsidy money than solar thermal systems. He was not thinking clearly about energy, but about dollars. I am talking about energy. Most of my courses and consulting, as well as my future book (in progress), are abt energy. Energy cost is more like a yo-yo, up and down, left and right, and even made more goofy when politically influenced costs like the current subsidies are added.
This is kinda like how utility rates in some areas encourage more use, or at least do not discourage more use. Electric utility rates up in Ohio and Indiana go down as usage goes up, called “regressive”. You folks in CA must think that’s completely bonkers! It is bonkers, a clear subsidy to people who use more. It’s not much different when we offer bounties to buy or install one kind of solar power or implement one kind of energy technology over another. What we should aim for and incentivize is reducing usage and demand for conventional energies, not how we do it! When we watch a TV program about losing weight, the award is given for the most lost weight, not for most push-ups, miles run or most diet food eaten.
Getting away from conventional energies is not a 1:1 with how much RE we install or buy. This is especially true with storage-free intermittent RE, where conventional generation is required in the background just in case a cloud rolls over or the wind dies outside. The REAL cost of RE generation when backup conventional generation is required in realtime with the RE system is the COMBINED COSTS OF RE + CONVENTIONAL. So while storage-free PV is certainly cheaper in/of itself, it’s not cheaper when you combine the overall system costs. I paid more per kW and per kWh to install storage and extra equipment to be off-grid. But I do not rely on or need the grid in order to operate my solar systems. Even my solar water heating is operated on PV. If it’s sunny and there’s a power outage on the grid, both my solar water heating and solar electric are working.
You have made some good and valid points. Although I very much doubt that renewable energy sources can adequately provide for the power requirements of large developed countries, they do have their place. The cost projections generally ignore the intermittent nature of renewable sources and also the fact that a suitable and economically acceptable method of storing large amounts of energy is not yet available. Probably solar heating is an application that often makes sense.
Regarding efficient windows, in my new house, for energy efficiency, I specified crank-out windows; they can be made to seal better. However, they may not be practical in areas where burglar bars are important; in those places, double-hung, single-hung, or windows that slide sideways may be the only practical choices and they probably cannot be made to seal as well as crank-out windows.
The real-estate market does not currently encourage energy efficiency. When designing my new house, I considered insulated concrete construction, but found that the cost could not be justified; the interest on the increased cost would greatly exceed the savings in energy cost. Also, it would not have increased the resale value of the house since buyers don’t yet give much weight to energy issues. So, I settled for 6″ stud wall construction instead of 4″ stud wall construction, which exceeded current code requirements. There should be some way to encourage more energy efficient construction. It would help if houses of all ages had energy efficiency information which had to be provided to prospective buyers.
Probably solar water heating can be economically justified in areas where natural gas is not available. However, my experience with it was unfortunate and turned out to be an expensive mistake, which I shall not repeat. I had a condo in San Diego; it had an electric water heater because, in a short-sighted attempt to save construction costs, the builder made everything electric, including heating. I had a solar water heater installed, which worked well. But then, the roof needed to be repaired and the home owners’ association forced me to remove the solar water heater at my expense so that the roof could be repaired. About that time, I sold the condo and the new owner had no interest in reinstalling the solar water heater, so even though it was only 6 years old, it was scrapped.
When determining the cost of roof-mounted solar equipment, it is essential to include the additional cost of eventual re-roofing.
It would be a good idea to shift part of the tax burden from the income tax to a tax on energy derived from fossil fuels. To avoid disruptions, the change could be phased in over a period of years. That would provide a strong motive to improve energy efficiency and, where practical, use solar heating. Eventually, more of our electricity should be generated using nuclear energy, but not from uranium. I’m convinced that thorium would be a much better choice than uranium and that, for a number of reasons, our uranium reactors are a serious mistake.
FRE, I almost never argue about completely eliminating fossil fuels, often for reasons you state. This is like sports. We don’t usually aim to lose “0” games or points throughout the season or game. We do aim to win more than we lose, to score more points than those scored against us. In my 28 yrs of business, we are still unable to reduce our energy usage as a society or nation, or to at least reduce it as same pace as new RE can be installed. We are still unfortunately increasing energy demands so much that it outpaces existing conventional + new RE. Result: we are still installing more conventional!
RE is intermittent, while our energy demands are clearly not limited nor limitable to only when RE is available. That’s not the same as saying we should not aim for substantial RE and much less conventional energy. And I’m also not saying we should not have substantially more storage in our homes and buildings.
My home has far more thermal storage than when I bought it in 1997. I have 60% more thermal storage for my water heating, which I modified when installing solar water heating. My home has substantially more thermal storage for its space heating, which I added when remodelling my home for passive solar. My office has 9-11 days of power storage (aka “batteries”) which I added when I converted it from coal-fired power to PV-power. My office has survived two 11-day cloudy stretches since I flipped the solar switch in Nov 2001.
Am I 100% totally off conventional energies? No. But if all households and small offices proceeded as I have, we’d be able to shutdown many fossil-fueled powerplants and reduce the flows of much heating energy fuels quite substantially. However, since most households and small offices are not lowering their energy usage, instead increasing it, national and regional energy consumption continues to rise, as stated above. The reason is we are not implementing reductions at sufficient scale.
And we’re not well focused on energy volumes. We focus on efficiency or which technology, not the energy volumes. It’s completely easy if not normal to become more efficient but use more volume of energy. Like building a more “efficient” home which is bigger, or using a more efficient engine or processor but to power a larger or heavier vehicle or machine. Heck, we watched a transition from energy-hog tube-type monitors and TVs to flat-screens which use less energy per square inch, yet people increased screen sizes en masse so that transition to more efficient screens resulted in increased electricity usage nationwide.
As for why our finance institutions don’t recognize or credit for better energy performance, that’s been a concern of mine for over 25 yrs. When I sold my last home in Cincinnati, I’d spent over $30,000 in energy performance improvements. Its annual energy operation cost (including my office with 2 daily workers) was way down to 46.3 cents/sf in 1997. Solar water heating, solar air heating, retrofitted insulation, airtightness, new triple pane windows with solar screens for summer, even interior insulated window shades. None of this was appraised with any value by the buyer’s mortgage bank. So I agree with you, and have first-hand experience with it.
We know from all kinds of recent experiences that our banks and many of our financial leaders are certainly not leaders we want to follow. They have led us to the brink of financial ruin with their greedy or short-sighted, often speculative policies and practices. So I do and recommend what I know to be right according to energy engineering principles, NOT WHAT THE BANKs OR GOVERNMENTs SAY TO DO.
Actually, I believe that we would totally eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels. See one of my previous posts in which I have included links to nuclear reactors that use thorium instead of uranium. They can circumvent most of the objections to reactors using uranium.
The biggest challenge would be to move away from using fossil fuels for transportation. Perhaps the biggest challenge of all would be airplanes.
FRE, I understand and agree with most of your points, but recommend that we should think and use economics, paybacks and ROI to make decisions between alternatives, not to decide whether or not to conserve, be more efficient and transition away from more conventional energies and toward REs. In other words, nonrenewable energies will eventually run out. Petroleum will be first, ngas maybe second. We cannot wait until we’re at the brink to make changes and start a transition. After all, we’re seeing the consequences of that short-sightedness in our nation’s current budget battles, where we have waited until we’re nearly at the brink despite knowing most of what we know now about our financial messes for decades.
Especially with super longterm things like homes and buildings, we need to think much longer term about how much energy dependence on what kind(s) of energies. When I teach classes for architects, engineers and contractors, I often challenge them to look out classroom windows and imagine what buildings and homes in view will be like, especially during Ohio Valley winters, when oil and ngas have either run out or become outragiously expensive or rationed. I ask this because most of our buildings and homes, even those being built today, are being built and spec’d based on super-short-term economics, often with no consideration of multiple/backup energies, often with no consideration of economics beyond low-cost infinite supplies of conventional nonrenewable energies.
I once read that in Sweden the energy code is forced to consider economics over 2 average mortgage periods! Yet I’ve heard Ohio Homebuilders Assn reps defend 5-7 yrs payback – for brand new homes!!! That’s just silly. It’s fine to make 5-7 yr payback decisions abt HVAC equipment or cars, but not about the long-lived insulating, airtightness and passive solar properties of our homes and buildings which will last maybe 200 yrs or more. At least in my region, there are hundreds of thousands of energy-obsolete homes and buildings from 100 or more years ago, where costs to retrofit them are so prohibitive that we send heating energy welfare to their occupants year after year. If they need heating oil or LP and petroleum becomes exhausted, as it certainly will eventually, what value will heating welfare be? Zip, zero, nothing.
The central theme to 2GreenEnergy is how to transition to renewables. I challenge readers and participants to understand that the best way to measure our success is NOT by counting how much new RE is bought or installed, but how much less conventional energy is bought or used. Right now we are expanding RE, but we’re also expanding conventional energy. With our electricity, the conventional expansion is still faster than the RE expansion. Part of this is due to our still expanding our total energy demands. Sure, in an advanced society like ours we need lots of energy, but constant relentless growth in energy use and demand cannot continue forever, whether we want to continue relying on conventional energies or transition to RE.
Since RE energies are typically more expensive and far more intermittent by their natures, most serious studies about transition say we need to adjust our usage way down compared to how we are now. I’ve done this and my customers have done this. My own office uses less than 20% of the electricity for plugged-in stuff than it did before 2000, which I accomplished in prep for transitioning to off-grid reliance on PV + batteries. My home’s heating energy use is about half of what it was before 1998, which I accomplished before adding passive solar. I also cut my last 2 homes’ heating energy use in half. My personal vehicle has used 200 gallons of oil per year for the last 3 years, down from over 500 gallons per year 20 yrs ago even though I now live in a rural area while I used to live in Cincinnati. Using substantially less conventional energy volume is the best and most significant first step in preparing for transition to RE.
You’re right; even if global warming were not a concern (and I believe that it is a concern), we’d be in real trouble if we waited until fossil fuels became scarce and expensive before beginning the transition away from them.
Surely it is helpful to use increased efficiency to reduce the need for energy, but in long run, demand for energy will greatly grow in spite of that. Consider the growing energy needs of China and India. Also, as development accelerates in Africa, its demand for energy will also grow. So, although increasing energy efficiency is helpful, ultimately, it will fall far short of what is required.
Again, the available evidence suggests that nuclear power is the only source of energy that is capable of enabling the world’s people to live convenient, comfortable, and healthful lives. But, as I have stated in previous posts, I also believe that using uranium reactors was a mistake from the very beginning and that thorium should have been used instead. However, for small communities in remote areas, solar power will probably remain the energy source of choice in spite of its disadvantages.
A professor of Mechanical Engineering at University of Dayton Ohio once gave a lecture I attended on the economics of home energy. This was before the current round of heavy RE subsidies which began in the 2nd term of GWBush. For those who don’t know, we had almost 20 years in most of USA, from Pres. Reagan’s 1st term to Pres. GWBush’s 2nd term, when there were very few subsidies for RE in most states or the federal level. Also for those who have not thought about this, the cost of RE is its total cost, before subsidies, even if a purchaser is getting some “free” money. Money does not grow on trees, but comes from somewhere, so total cost is essential when looking at and evaluating the big pictures.
Anyway, the UD Prof gives a great lecture going over the economics of energy in residential. His math, using total costs, proved to me that most existing homes should aim for at least 1/3 reduction in energy use BEFORE considering RE. His math on new homes proved to me that as much as 2/3 reduction in energy use is prudent BEFORE considering RE. In both his analyses, he applied all the costs of energy retrofitting existing homes or applying added energy improvements in new designs, then compared with long-term energy usage costs.
This was an engineering-level lecture, heavy on math. Its logic has stuck for me, the main uncertainty being the future costs of energy which is always tough to estimate accurately. However, the prof did not factor in catastrophic possibilities like happened after Hurricane Katrina, the OPEC Oil Embargo or the recent Japanese earthquake and tsumami which caused major disruptions in energy cost and availability. He also did not factor in any nonrenewable energy depletions…
Why do we not hear about our energy choices with background like this? After all, this prof is old enough, as am I, to have gotten started doing energy consulting way back when Jimmy Carter was pres. Why is it most of our current energy leadership so neglectful of the ideas that conservation and efficiency should be done first, RE later? I think the answer is lobbying.
We live in an economic market dominated by sales and purchases, where stuff is advertised as better if it accomplishes simplistic results like bigger, more, faster, newer, fancier, higher-tech, etc. So we incentivize sales of more RE and other high-tech energy hardware, not how much reduced energy usage we actually accomplish or how much less conventional energy generation or dependence results. Most of the current energy subsidies reward for how much money is spent, not for how much (if any) reduction in conventional energy dependence occurs.
I challenge readers to find some of the old energy books written before the current round of lobbied-for subsidies and incentives. Look at all the included focus on efficiency, conservation and downsizing prior to doing RE. It’s in book after book. This is because back in “the old days” before lobbied-for subsidies and incentives, some of us were already thinking, planning, experimenting, demonstrating and writing about how to do this stuff !
Solar didn’t start with PV, as Craig’s history suggests. Solar started with daylighting and passive solar heating, going way back into the BCs. The earliest book I’ve seen on passive solar was from ancient Greece, when those ancient folks were trying to reduce their need to burn so much firewood. At least in my region of the world, a typical household spends 50% or more of total annual energy cost on HEATING, so it makes sense not to ignore ways, solar or not, to lower heating energy use. PV is important, and I also have PVs, but the first solar improvements I did on my current and last homes were about solar heating, not PVs.
Try to look at all this “transition to RE” more historically. Take a much broader and wiser view on all this than what you typically hear from most advertisers and politicians. I also recommend paying more attention when somebody who’s telling you how and what you should buy or do IS ACTUALLY RECOMMENDING WHAT THEY HAVE ALREADY DONE TO/FOR THEMSELVES! I hear this from my own customers who often say they are assured I can help them because they see I’ve already done most of what I recommend to them for myself, in my own homes, in my own business. RE advocates and professionals, learn to walk the talk!
And when I describe my solar stuff to my family, friends or customers, I always describe how much less conventional energy I use because of the solar, not how much or what brand of solar stuff, or whether I received any or how many subsidies.
We want less conventional energy dependence, that’s goal #1. By reporting RE in terms of how much less conventional energy rather than how much or what brand or type of RE, we allow and encourage inclusion of positive results from conservation, efficiency and downsizing. If I were in charge of our subsidies, I’d incentivize according to how much less conventional energy, so all methods and products used to accomplish less use would be rewarded equally.