Can We Achieve a Sustainable Approach to Energy? Many Reasons To Think So, But Just As Many To Be Pessimistic

As we recall from Dickens, “… it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, ….”

Those of us trying to pay attention to the world around us live our daily lives bathed in this type of schizophrenia.  Just when it seems that the fossil industry has an ironclad grasp on our throats (and lungs), along comes an article like this one, indicating the state of New York is very close to a complete rethinking of the way it regulates utilities.

If this happens, we have reason to think that, for the first time in history, we (or at least New Yorkers) will have an environment where customers have an incentive to use off-peak power and install solar and other forms of distributed generation, and utilities will have a reason to want to sell less power, while migrating to clean energy sources — actually exceeding the renewable portfolio standards.

Wow.