Home › Renewables - Politics › Attempting To View Renewable Energy Intelligently

Attempting To View Renewable Energy Intelligently

craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It’s the birthday of F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose affinity for the leisure class served as the driving force behind many of the classics he produced in the early 20th Century. Somewhere along the way, Fitzgerald wrote something that I’ve always treasured: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

It’s the lack of the “first-rate intelligence” that lies at the root of so many problems in the world today.  We want easy answers; we want to see things in black and white terms, but factually, today’s world doesn’t present itself that way; life in the 21st Century is more nuanced. 

I aspire to that sort of intelligence (though I certainly don’t claim to have achieved it).  My evolving viewpoints on renewable energy are an example of my unexceptional attempts to reach this point.  I’m a clean energy advocate, obviously, though I try not to lose sight of the “tough realities” – as I like to call them:

• There are places where the availability of renewable resources is terribly weak.

• How well and how quickly can we develop the peripheral technologies that will help us integrate large volumes of solar and wind (given that they’re variable in nature): smart grid, low-cost energy storage, high-voltage transmission, vehicle-to-grid, etc?

• How far in the direction of a sustainable approach to energy can we get with the real “low-hanging fruit,” i.e., energy efficiency and conservation?

• What’s the trajectory for other appealing but not-yet-available technologies, e.g., thorium (nuclear) reactors?

• What’s to be done with the enormous and fabulously expensive infrastructure we have in place currently to process fossil fuels?

• We can’t snap our fingers and get all the lobbyists for the oil companies out of our law-making process.  Among other things this means that, realistically, fossil fuels will continue to enjoy preferential treatment over renewables, despite their ill-effects on our health and environment.

• I advocate in favor of democracy too, but here in the U.S., voters are deluged with inflammatory messages every two years about their current situation, not their future, and so they disdain energy solutions that would suggest even a tiny compromise in their consumer life-style today. 

This makes for an extremely complicated calculus that, actually, forces us to keep not two, but several opposing ideas in our heads simultaneously.  

If you have an idea on expanding humankind’s level of this so-called “first-rate intelligence,” I’d certainly love to hear from you. 

Tagged with: , , , , ,
8 comments on “Attempting To View Renewable Energy Intelligently”
  1. Don Harmon says:
    October 5, 2013 at 2:18 pm

    To your point:” I advocate in favor of democracy too, but here in the U.S., voters are deluged with inflammatory messages every two years about their current situation, not their future, and so they disdain energy solutions that would suggest even a tiny compromise in their consumer life-style today”

    Until the big players both in Govt. and Private industry get their acts together- you cannot expect the people (consumers) to change their life style choices particularly when jobs are scarce, pay is low, benefits are changing, student loans are ridiculous, and our own Govt. can’t even pass a balanced budget.

    Bottom line, Craig, is all this talk of Green / Renewable Energy, EV’s, Solar Rooftop Systems for every home Wind Power farms, etc. is just like a fart in the wind. I know because I have been working in the Renewable Energy field for over 10 years now but I see very few rewards for it. I have come to the conclusion that this industry is truly available ONLY to the rich upper class sector and is still far removed for the average middle class in the U.S.

    Until this problem is fixed (the gap between the have’s an have not’s) you can write books and blogs until the cows come home and it won’t change the way the world is right now.

  2. ron mccurdy says:
    October 5, 2013 at 2:35 pm

    Ride a semi recumbent electric trike to shop instead of a 2500 pound auto. No need for a parking lot or shopping cart. If everyone is driving the car- let them / maybe some day they will enjoy shopping again when they suddenly realize they don’t need 2 cars and big insurance policies. Used to be we charged for shopping bags so we bought reusables and re-used them Now no more charging the nuisance fee but we still use reusable bags.
    Maybe we should charge for parking at the supermarket and we could ride our trikes and use the parking lots for something else. One person at a time= that’s all I can do unless you’d like a nice electric trike http://www.epowertrikes.com

  3. markmcleod14 says:
    October 5, 2013 at 3:29 pm

    I appreciate your thoughtful essay. It is an important piece of the conversation.

    I recently heard Tom Steyer say, “We can no longer afford to ‘try to reduce our carbon footprint as much as possible.’ We must commit to creating a country that, within our lifetime, runs entirely on clean energy!” That is another important piece of the conversation.

    By the way, take a look at one of Tom’s many projects — the Risky Business Initiative (www.riskybusiness.org)

  4. Les Blevins says:
    October 5, 2013 at 6:11 pm

    The question of; “How well and how quickly can we develop the peripheral technologies that will help us integrate large volumes of solar and wind (given that they’re variable in nature)” is the question of the day. As the developer of new concept technology that I’m convinced could enable a doubling of wind and solar deployment I’m looking for a strategic alliance or perhaps seed funding to demonstrate this distributed technology I’ve developed, patented and tested.

    At AAEC we believe we need to repower human activities with much cleaner energy on a grand scale, and we believe that innovation is key to a better future and we aspire to offer homeowners, businesses, towns, cities, counties and utilities our innovative new concept low-budget, low-carbon pathway to greater energy efficiency, energy security, cleaner energy and economic development. And now that President Obama has decided on moving the climate issue forward to the front burner I’m growing more confident this will be a big boost to what we are offering.

    Les Blevins
    President AAEC
    Advanced Alternative Energy
    1207 N 1800 Rd., Lawrence, KS 66049
    Phone 785-842-1943 Fax 785-842-0909
    Email LBlevins@aaecorp.com

    For more info on what my firm offers see
    http://aaecorp.com
    http://aaecorp.com/ceo.html
    http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=hb_tab_pro_top

    AAEC’s product lines could be manufactured in any locality on any continent for the local and regional market, which we believe could create many licensing opportunities, and new jobs and this is one of several points we would like to discuss with investors, potential alliance partners or collaboration partners, and then of course offer AAEC’s technology to an ever more alternative energy hungry world –

  5. Colin Brown says:
    October 5, 2013 at 6:11 pm

    Great to see that you now have thorium reactors in the mix. Funding for research appears to be the stumbling block here. What we need is someone eloquent and crazy enough to set up a mega-million dollar kick starter fund to get the ball rolling. Who knows, it might just get enough media attention to actually make some headway!

  6. Craig Shields says:
    October 6, 2013 at 11:33 am

    Thanks, Colin. Please see: http://2greenenergy.com/2013/10/06/thorium-reactors-2/.