Optimism / Pessimism on the Future of Renewable Energy
Those who believe that America is caught in a downward spiral have a great deal on which to base those beliefs – principally the nation’s failure to take a moral high ground on several main issues — energy and climate change among several: social justice, civil liberties, overseas imperialism, etc. Of course, I tend to see the world through the lens of energy policy, sustainability, and environmentalism, and I’m deeply perturbed that my country – arguably the single best positioned to make a difference in the course of humankind – has contented itself to sit around and bicker about these issues while the viability of our ecosystems continues to deteriorate.
But personally, I remain upbeat, in the belief that the future looks very bright indeed, largely due to the falling price of renewable energy. Recent utility-scale deals for solar PV were signed at $0.05/kWh, and large wind deals at $0.02. This is far cheaper than coal and nuclear.
On the political front, we are beginning to see change as well. It’s very unlikely that whoever runs for U.S. president on the Republican ticket in 2016 will denounce renewable energy (like Romney did in 2012) as an expensive waste of time, a fad, a job-killer, a leftist attack on free-market capitalism, etc.
Even if there is no such consensus in the validity of clean energy right now, it’s clear that, as young people come into greater prominence, they will have very little tolerance for the status quo in the energy arena – a tack that is rapidly ruining the planet. I’m reminded of what the great physicist Max Plank, one of the progenitors of quantum mechanics in the early 20th Century, said when, to his astonishment, the subject he’d discovered came under fierce attack from older members of the scientific community who bitterly denied the validity of Plank’s amazing new discoveries. He said, “It’s not a problem. The old people with their unshakable attachment to old ideas will die off, and the young people will accept quantum physics as if we had known about it for a thousand years.” And that is precisely what happened.
Of course, in the case of clean energy, we really don’t have a full generation to make the shift if we’re going to avoid catastrophic environmental damage. Yet, again, I’m upbeat that we’re headed for success.
Having said all this, if you, for whatever reason, feel that the best days are behind us, I can understand that, and I offer you this incredibly beautiful but profoundly sad piece of music. It’s written and performed by Iris Dement (pictured above), one of my favorite singer-songwriters, and it speaks so well to that point of view.
