The Importance of Being Contextual
Debate continuously swirls around which alternative energy technologies will efficiently and substantially move us away from a dependence upon earth smothering fossil fuels.
Experts tend to put solar in the abundant bucket. Solar, under certain assumptions, has the ability to meet ALL of the earth’s energy demand (~13TW). Wind, our other renewable manna, can be dropped in the useful bucket as it requires a much larger land area to capture the same amount of electricity yet could sustainably produce ~7TW of our need. [1]
Nerdy, puny wind and solar are in a battle with the muscular beast that is fossil. If these upstart energy sources are to compete and realistically supplant a portion of our energy demand, we should dedicate all of our resources to solving their obvious technical and systemic challenges. Fie, biofuels. Fie, geothermal. Fie hydrokinetics. Right?
I’m not so sure.
In a fractured world, energy and climate policies tend to flow to the lowest common jurisdictional denominator. A global solution is simply not in the cards. Further complicating our attempts to build global solutions is the distributed and locally monopolistic nature of electricity generation. How in the heck can we reasonably expect those guys to get together to compete against big oil?
My point is that contextual solutions also matter. They move us forward at a localized level creating tremendous economic and environmental value.
When the sun shines, make solar. When the moon passes, make tidal. Where pond scum grows, make algal biofuels.
I’ll dig deeper on these latter two solutions in the future.
[1] Wind Fights Solar; Triangle Wins by Tom Murphy http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8717
Notes
-
nickthejam liked this
-
adventuresincleantech posted this
