Energy Pragmatism

What a great pleasure to come face to face with Glenn Doty, senior energy analyst and frequent commenter at 2GreenEnergy, during my visit to Doty Scientific on Friday.  Had Glenn not had business to which to attend, I would have loved to have extended our conversation in the “break room” far longer than the hour or so that we actually had together. 

I began by asking him to tell me about his thought-evolution in energy.  “To get this kicked off,” I began, “I’m constantly coming across concepts that contravene what I would have previously bet my life on.  People will write me and complain, ‘Now you’re saying X.  But you also say Y.’  ‘Well, I explain, I thought Y, but that was two years ago.  Can you image how many new ideas I’ve run across since then?’  Surely, Glenn, you’ve had similar experiences.”

Glenn explained that, for a long period, he was an idealist, bitterly refusing to admit the value of hydrocarbon fuels – certainly fossil fuels — in a world that’s clearly choking itself off with greenhouse gasses and aromatics. 

“Then what happened?” I asked. 

“Well, it began when I realized that the ‘hydrogen economy’ was being forced on us, and I could see how totally absurd the idea was.  To cut to the chase, I would say that I’m a person with a most sincere desire to solve the world energy picture, and to advocate for the solutions that will get us there.  But I’m no longer a dreamer.” 

To distill Glenn’s thinking into a few sentences, it comes down to what he calls “brutal economics.”  In a world that steadfastly refuses to accept the concept of externalities, and so refuses to pay the increase in costs associated with fossil fuels’ damage to our lungs and the natural environment, we will be looking for the least expensive way to deliver the 15 terawatts of power we need. 

When we talk about biomass, for example, we commonly ignore things like trees, because we figure that wood is a hydrocarbon.  We pay no attention to the cost side of the equation of growing trees versus growing hay.  But where we plant trees and leave them alone for 20 years, we plant hay, fertilize and irrigate it constantly, and harvest it four times a year. Can you imagine the difference in costs?  Which do you think would be better for the planet: a terawatt made of 20% solar and 80% coal, or a terawatt made of 100% wood?  It’s clearly the latter.

Glenn is the quintessential “energy pragmatist,” not holding onto idealistic beliefs that have no meaning in the real world, but advocating for (and actually developing) solutions that make a positive difference in our lives as they actually exist.