Renewable Energy, Renewing AmericaBy Jane Holtz Kay Flipping the light switch and plugging the toaster cord-- those acts of faith in the endless summer of American expansion---have become leaps of fear in this season of the rolling blackouts. As California dreaming has become a national nightmare, the fallback to dirty fuel from Arctic oil drilling to nuclear expansion is a threat. And the danger of plunging into still filthier Filthy Five energy solutions looms. All the omens are not dark, however. Energy shortages, like recessions, have their environmental upside. Let the good times role and up goes the consumption of natural resources and the spewing of fossil fuels that pollute the planet and cause global warming. Let the good times slow and you have involuntary but real conservation. The upside of the shortfall in New England, then, is that misgivings about shrinking supplies and dirty old-style power sources could advance alternate energy sources and improve the economy of a region short on the staple fossil fuel -spitting ones. No coal. No oil. No natural gas. None of these heavy-duty energizers (and greenhouse gas creators) spring from our hardscrabble soil region. In contrast, eternal and renewable resources - wind and sun - beat down on our six-state region. Solar energy abounds. "As natural as the sun in your face," in the phrase of the authors of Who Owns the Sun. "The energy of the sun in just Massachusetts is equivalent to the entire energy of the United States," says Douglas Holmes, a Lexington engineer who's pushed for sustainable energy since the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973. "Enough of the sun's energy falls on earth each minute to meet the electric energy demands of althea world's people for an e entire year," Solar Boston puts it. No mining, drilling, pumping, land disruption. No hazardous wastes, no air or water pollution, no noise. "We certainly can take advantage of solar," agrees Greg Watson, director of renewable energy at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, a state-funded economic development agency. Combined with New England's heritage of forced thrift, the region's celebrated academic and scientific community and its citizens' alarm at prices, shortages and environmental damage, such alternate power could rescue a region with less than one percent now in renewable sources. An "overflowing" meeting of the New England Council session on the subject in mid-February testifies to the appeal of the subject. The question is: Will New Englanders rise to the challenge by capitalizing on this intellectual and climactic promise? A generation ago, during that oil crisis, ideas to harness the sun flourished. Jimmy Carter planted hot water solar panels on the White House roof, the government provided tax incentives. Energy-saving projects proliferated from Maine to California. Unfortunately, it was short-lived. With oil prices dropping, Ronald Reagan took down those energy-catchers and savers and energy-gluttony became the order of the day.
The alternatives are myriad. Not only the sun shines in this weather-whipped region. "The real resource is wind," says Watson. With the price dropping 25 percent a year, now down to five or ten cents per kilowatt hour, plans to yoke windpower are growing, as problems shrink. Concern for the wind farms' noise, aesthetics and harm to bypassing birds also fade as new kinds of siting in the ocean and other devides remove the threats. The Berkshires have tucked a wind farm near the Brodie Mountain ski lift and the off-shore potential is "fantastic," says Watson. Wind turbines have served the Dutch and Danes for a decade. Germany is on target to set up one-third of Europe's windpower by 20l0. And, with newer taller, thinner, elegant objects, wind-farms can pay farmer's and supply electricity all at once. New York has slotted 50 million dollars for 200 megawatts of windpower, enough to power 200,000 homes. And one western Massachusetts physicist speaks glowingly of "windships," "urban wind furnaces" and a wind-powered University of Massachusetts. Ironically, tech-savvy Massachusetts and other New England states, like the U.S. as a whole, lag light years behind other nations. Europe outpaces America in its sustainable energy; especially in the continent's northern climes; the European Union's goal: twenty percent renewables. Tidal and wind power have become major energy-churners from England to Kenya to India. Photovoltaic panels harnessed to the sun like the ones that line German autobahns, plus wind turbines there expanded the country's renewables by 18 percent last year. Greenpeace Netherlands' 32-page report carries the slightly skeptical title "Solar Energy: from Perennial Promise to Competitive Alternative," but even this cloudy country is light years ahead of the U.S. Solar energy is the next or coming contender when prices drop. A-solar-panel-for-every-roof might the motto of the sun-capturing photovoltaic industry. The push now is to slot the energy absorbers into the structure itself as Steven Strong, an architect in Harvard, has done. Occupying no space and offering no interferences, such energy sources can connect to the electric company grid for the give-and-take called net metering: Give energy back at sunlit hours, take it in during gray ones and a rooftop supply puts anybody in the energy business. Historically, of course, passive solar energy is a New England staple. Today it could supply 50 percent of the region's energy, says Holmes. "We're still building a million mistakes a year," he labels that number of annual new single-family houses. Almost all ignore the power-saving potential of siting, massing, insulating and daylighting buildings as the New England farmhouse always has. Holmes' own south-facing Lexington home uses a scant cord of wood per year - and no oil or gas. A handful of solar homes appear, but not enough. "Grossly underused," he says. In the spirit inspired by President Clinton's Million Solar Roof goal, SolarBoston is targeting the year 20l0 to have its share of the program's 10,000 roof top storehouses ready to absorb and distribute sun-bred energy. Yet, here, too the national - yes, national - sum of 1.2 million in funds is symptomatic of the minimal nature of the props for clean power. "An unlevel playing field," says Larry Chretien, head of the Mass Energy Consumers Assistance which advocates for affordable green energy for its 7000 customers. "Renewables are just a blip," says Chretien who also harks back to the seventies. "I'm a pretty persistent person but I don't want to wait another 20 years.. "There are some real opportunities for us to develop renewables but we need to start moving a lot faster," says Warren Leon, executive director of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) in Greenfield, a granddaddy in the field scheduled to hold a green conference at Tufts March 23-26. To the list, Leon adds bio-energy i.e. turning biomass - plant material - into power. Here lies another New England asset: trees. "There's a significant forestry industry product in the northeast. We don't want to exploit where we shouldn't but there's a certain amount of wood waste that could be used for energy," he says citing Burlington, Vermont's biomass gasifier. The Bay State is, of course, restructuring, paying for and pushing renewables and that could help clean its power. To do so, the New England states have adopted two methods: first through funding; second through (to put it less politely) forcing. The funding gleans money from electricity bills and spends it through the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust Fund supposedly to the tune of 150 million dollars to pay for clean power. The forcing part makes utilities put a percentage of their portfolios in green energy. For all these potentials, not one of New England's 30 cleaner power plants will be truly clean as they begin to add 50 percent to the current 24,000 megawatts used in the region. Even as Richard Kennelly, energy director at the Conservation Law Foundation and others talk of the futuristic end of the sustainable spectrum, pushing hydrogen fuel cells powered by wind or water, the current efforts lag, the Trust has yet to distribute any of that money anywhere. A bureaucratic limbo, say environmentalists. More happily, beyond the public sector, green interest grows in the business community. Seeing the light (or glint of gold) in alternative energy sourced and nudged by climate activist attacks, oil companies have slowly considered other sources. While still prodding our presidential COE (chief oil executive) to continue pernicious practices in high seas and other oil-drilling explorations, these companies have begun to produce cleaner fuel. BP, the old British Petroleum, now advertising itself as "Beyond Petroleum," has bought a photovoltaic plant. Texaco, Shell, and ASE Americas, Inc. in Billerica are manufacturing and marketing renewables. Shell is planting trees and using geothermanl energy in Iceland to produce hydrogen from water. At the same time, the conservation-minded maintain that our energy salvation is closer to hand. Or, actually, at our right hand. Snap off the lights, batten down the hatches, switch off the computers nightly -- "the Click and Clack mentality," Watson calls it. Buy less, dump less. With the U.S.'ongoing buying spree predicted t rise by 32 percent this decade, many work to end our "Take-Make-Waste" cycle of building, producing and driving which not only swallows consumes fossil fuel and polluted our resources but heats our planet. Throughout the region, the concern with a more "Natural Capitalism" is visible in meetings of "Sustainable Step: New England" and the Green Roundtables where environmentalists study how to make products energy-lite and clean, not just from cradle to grave but from cradle to cradle, closing the loop that stops squandering resources. Legislation could help. Activists are trying to pass a bill for a Green Building Income Tax Credit while MassPIRG's legislation to reduce energy consumption by 20 percent would elevate energy efficiency in structures to top priority. "It may sound ambitious," but when engineers get into the buildings, it could increasing saving by as much as 40 percent," says energy attorney Derek Haskew. "Once it becomes a priority, it will easily meet our energy goals, he says, and the savings, year after year, will multiply that number. "We have the makings for doing quite a bit," says Watson, to make communities come together. Whether that togetherness-- the green versus the greed-- can control our fossil fuel habits and handouts this time Śround is unclear. But one thing is certain: the shift from dirty to clean fuels has deeper ecological implications in the 2lst century crisis than ever before. Originally published in the The Boston Globe, March 11, 2001.
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Today, federal subsidies for oil and coal amount to more than $20 billion annually. With one quarter of our military budget going to protect oil interests in Middle East outposts like Iraq, the turn of the hottest century, finds oil-aficionado Bush as CEO. While the White House pushes to drill the Arctic wilderness and advocates 95 million for "clean" coal technology (an oxymoron), the Department of Energy turns, Strangelove-style back to nuclear energy. Today's green power can't compete with such props. Clearly the time has come to renew renewables, say advocates.