“Is Renewable Really Doable?” on Television
I’m shooting a television show on Wednesday whose producer wants me to speak on my new book: Is Renewable Really Doable? In preparation, he asked me for the main topics I’d like to address. I replied that we could get into the meat of the book:
• What the world’s biggest governments are doing to accelerate – and retard – the adoption of clean energy.
• How venture capitalists think with respect to clean energy start-ups.
• How pure and unbiased the thinking of the scientific community actually is.
• What the world will probably be like in ten years? 50 years.
• How the credit crunch and the end of cheap oil will affect us all.
But, while I think 2GreenEnergy readers will be absorbed by these conversations, I have to think that most people tuning into some TV channel might find this too esoteric and off-putting.
I told him, “When I go on most TV and radio shows, I talk about the basic issues: the tough realities, i.e., the technological, and the economic/political issues that make the clean energy discussion such a battleground. What exactly is renewable energy? Why is it better than extracting and burning fossil fuels? If there are good reasons for making the transition (which there are) – even though it comes at an expense, why isn’t it happening? This is much better fare for a general audience, so let’s go with this more simplified subject matter.”
I hope I’m right here. We’ll see.
I suggest aiming for less fossil fuels, howsoever that’s achieved (i.e. conservation, efficiency, renewables, etc). There are many examples out there, including me, including many of my customers, who already demonstrate a massive amount of reduction in fossil fuel use.
Amory Lovins has a new book even claiming it doesn’t really matter what our governments think or do on this matter. Lovins even argues that we can even avoid the politically toxic arguments about climate change, instead focusing on saving energy money and being better positioned in the long run for an otherwise unavoidably expensive and risky future for those who remain addicted to guzzling as much fossil fuels as they can today. I share both these views.
The question is not / should not be whether renewables are doable, but rather how much less fossil fuels we can or should use. Too much going on in the RE-first advocacy is so pushy and narrowly focused on RE. Some RE advocacy even avoids moving away from fossil fuels, instead advocating for storage-free RE like PVs without batteries which REQUIRE the fossil-fueled grid ad infinitum, sometimes not removing any fossil fueled generation.
So let’s look for examples of how some have substantially cut their fossil fuel use. It’s not even important how they did it, just that they already did it. We should learn to follow their leads, understand the hows and whys which influenced them. I’ve said and written about my own case many times, notably how I moved my own office off the coal-fired grid by a combination of 3 parts conservation and efficiency, 1 part solar and batteries. When I design a solar-heated home, my first task is to cut heat losses by half or two-thirds, then add some solar. In other words, RE doesn’t even need to be, probably shouldn’t be the majority of the implementation.