Clean Energy: We Sure Are Good At Talking About It

There are a few weapons in my arsenel as an advocate for renewables, and one of them is a fairly comprehensive calendar of events.  I use it primarily to schedule travel, trying, as I have all my adult life, to maximize the value of each mile flown, by combining trips to see clients, prospects, book interview subjects — as well as family and friends.  If you click on the link, you’ll notice that there are normally half a dozen of so different energy-related events somewhere in the world — every day.

You’ll also notice that the preponderance of these events concern renewables.  There is an occasional symposium on shale gas, but most of the talk is on solar, wind, geothermal, storage, integration of intermittent sources, clean energy financing, etc. 

I suppose it’s good that people are speaking about clean energy – but it’s also part of the problem.  Where renewables garners most of the talk, most of the action — at least in the US, goes to oil, gas, and coal — each working their hearts out to put a spear through renewables for as long as they possibly can hold us off.

A vintage example of that is Proposition 23 here in California.  Funded almost exclusively by two Texas oil companies, Prop 23 would set the cause of clean energy back by several decades.  In a debate on the subject the other day, its proponent told her audience that California generates only 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and that therefore its air standards were inconsequential to the total.  That is a deliberate attempt to miss the point.  California is a leader in many social phenomena.  If something new is successfully piloted in California, it tends to work its way quickly into the rest of the US, and often into other cultures around the world.

Prop 23 is an attempt to kill the migrations from fossil fuels — one that uses grossly misleading advertising to forward its filthy position. On Tuesday, I’m going to join about 60% of my fellows here in voting this measure down.  But the fact that the oil companies have us debating the merits of clean energy mandates is just amazing to me.