All Our Energy

Oh, the bickering! I can’t stand it when I’m following articles, blogs and the like and see the disagreement over meaningless(at least to the overall “big picture”) items or ideas.
All the while

green energy opponents obfuscate and confuse issues, helping the general public tune out or believe nonsense because they cannot understand what is going on. We in the renewable energy field must stop our obsession that every…single…detail…of a renewable energy project, concept, method or means must be perfect in every way before it can proceed.
This single factor alone may be keeping the renewable energy and “Green Revolution” from happening due to a lack of consensus.
We are to blame. We need to get on the same page. We need to explain so the average person can understand. We must point out hypocrisy from people who are supposedly in our ranks.
We are going to fail to competitively launch new renewable energy sources if we all continue to:

• Demand perfection in every way before deployment (when current energy sources fail every and all of those same benchmarks.)
• allow anti-renewable energy gadflies to murk the discussion. so easy; and we are ready to fly off on a tangent instead of sticking to the facts, pointing out hypocrites and ignoring them or better, outing their real identities and motivations. Call a spade a spade. Require solutions to join the discussion.
• Bicker amongst ourselves about efficiencies, dogma, semantics (hey we’re even guilty ourselves of stipulating we are against using food sources for fuel!- everyone’s got their reasons and limits!)

So, does it have to be” perfect”? Isn’t “better than what we have” ….well…, better?
Should we strive for perfection? OF COURSE! Should that desire for betterment stand in the way of our doing RIGHT NOW what we can, because maybe in ten or fifteen years technology will be way ahead of whatever we have now? (well, not really- solar and wind have peaked with only modest gains in the 10 to 15 years previous. The technology hasn’t “doubled” efficiency over that time frame. In fact, it hasn’t even exceeded 15-20% improvement in the last 20-30 years. What has evolved has been means, methods, siting, and in the case of solar, mass production has reduced the cost, but we still have yet to see the great savings on the retail level from the influx of “cheap” Chinese goods and the efficiencies of the new technology..

I was wondering….

• Just this week, thousands lined up around the Apple stores across the country to get the iPhone 4s, which I can’t really tell if it has anything better than my measly iPhone 4. Hmmm.
• Did Toyota and General Motors stop designing new cars because technology is going to change over the next few years and their cars will be outdated?
• Did Prada, Armani, Gucci, and the rest not have new fashions and just close their doors this year because fashion is going to change, so why bother?

Should we let “perfection” stand in the way of doing what we can now, because what we have now is “only” 85, 90, 95% perfect?
As a builder, especially on renovation projects, I must make decisions daily to achieve the “best possible outcome”. This can be any or all of the following: in the speediest time-frame, within the budget I have, with the tools at hand, and materials I can get. The client’s top priority of Time, Money or Quality is the basis for my decision.
I would say we have the quality: there is no significant leap expected.
Our time frame is VERY short. The concepts of global warming, peak oil, and the like, cannot be dismissed.
When it comes to money, from the numbers I have seen, we are on or close to parity for electricity generation pricing for large wind and solar farms. In real dollars, renewable power plants are comparative to ANY OTHER NEWLY BUILT EFFICIENT SYSTEM. That is not including the hidden costs of fossil fuels that are passed on to everyone by the user of those fuels. That also is not including the $200+ billion annually welfare-d out to the oil, gas and coal companies that IS NOT available to renewable energy sources. And that isn’t including tax-breaks, write-offs and the like, estimated by some to be another $1 trillion just from those industries. Unfortunately, the reality is that our budget is small, because the public haven’t demanded clean energy…yet!

It should boil down to a few basic questions:

• how much current usage and the associated pollution, war Etc is displaced
• Does it work?
• Do we need it? (seems like yeses to me)

The concept of perfection is: we will never reach it. It is the “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow”. So please, go catch the end of the next rainbow; instead of bickering with me.