Making The Alt Energy Push

How do you answer naysayers? With a big, workable plan.One of the things that has plagued the growth of clean, renewable energy in the West has been an almost fervent, religious pessimism regarding the prospect; whether the extremes of environmentalism have worked their way into the public consciousness, or people are just naturally skeptical of “free” energy from the sun being actually free, it seems most are afraid of something like wind or solar as an actual answer to our problems.Enter Scientific American. Their January 2008 issue proposes something truly radical: a massive push to replace almost 70% of the United States’ electrical needs with solar by 2050. [via MariaEnergia] Sound incredible? All that’s required is a 30,000 square mile solar farm, some storage, and the high efficiency transmission lines to get it from the Southwest to the rest of the US.Simple.The reality is, however, that it’s almost childishly simple. The problems are one of scale. The solar farms are coming on-line, storage schemes worthy of the project have variously been in continuous use since 1978, and the transmission line technology exists and is already being coveted by those with the dream of transforming the grid electrical system in the US to something more sustainable. Next step will be to scale up many of these technologies.From the aspect of the solar farms, the good news is that it’s one of the hottest sectors in VC investing, one built on proven technology (if still a little immature), and with a strong, existing industrial base. The biggest questions in solar are simply improving efficiency over cost, something already on the horizon at least as far as lab tests are concerned. The real problem is public and political will. Nordhaus and Shellenberger ran into similar problems when attempting to sell their “Apollo program for climate change” to Presidential candidates. At the time (2004), with global warming not really hitting the front page yet, they found a lot of people willing to agree in principle to their idea for a major developmental push to end dependence on fossil fuels, but no one would put any real muscle behind it. Where it could have been a defining call for action for the Democrats in 2004, in fact, they ignored it and ultimately lost to a second Bush term.The Scientific American concept can succeed, but it’s going to need a champion in the mold of Kennedy and his proposal to put a man on the Moon within a decade. And like Kennedy and Apollo, the plan has to be solid enough to outlive the originator, and span multiple Presidential administrations. But now is certainly a ripe time for this kind of proposal, and with the US Presidential campaigns kicking into high gear, now is certainly the time for a champion candidate (or party) to step and bring this kind of dream to the forefront and make it reality.

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