photo courtesy Roger Wolvington

As Boulder considers the Xcel franchise agreement it is important to look at their past record and attitude. Consider Boulder’s Carbon Action Program. While Xcel offers a range of energy efficiency programs they are primarily concerned with the continued operation of their coal fired power plants. This is made clear by their policy regarding outdoor lighting. Xcel does not offer rebates for energy efficient outdoor lighting because these lights are on at night. While it is clear that we should be doing all we can to reduce carbon emissions at night as well as in the day time it is in the financial interests of the operator of a coal fired power plant to encourage wasteful energy practices especially at night, Coal power plants cannot be turned off when there is reduced energy use so utilities encourage wasteful energy habits especially at night. Xcel is not going to be a proactive partner in the effort to reform our energy use patterns.

Promises

When Boulder first began to examine the question of the municipalization of our electric energy system Xcel offered a very tempting prize. Xcel would make Boulder Smart Grid City. They were going to spend $100 million making Boulder the showcase of the nation in smart energy use and the development of infrastructure for the introduction of electric vehicles. The use of electric vehicles is crucial for the reduction of our carbon footprint. An electric vehicle can be up to 10 times as efficient as a gasoline powered vehicle and if it is recharged with wind power or solar energy it is a zero emission option for personal mobility. Smart grid allows for several improvements that will help with the transition to clean electric transportation including time of use charging, power tagging and vehicle-to-grid storage of renewable energy.

A Missed Opportunity

Recently representatives of the Chinese car manufacturer BYD were in Boulder. Warren Buffet is a partner in this cleantech company. BYD indicated that if Boulder had an aggressive smart grid program they would be proactive partners in showcasing the benefits of electric vehicles. Unfortunately Xcel’s Smart Grid program has been a bust. Not only have they failed to implement the technology, they spent only $40 million – not the $100 million they promised – and they are trying to get the PUC to let them pass those costs back to their customers in Boulder. Xcel has cost Boulder a key opportunity in reducing our carbon use.

Bad Attitude

Utilities encourage the growth of energy use over efficiency. In a recent article by the Rocky Mountain Institute it was pointed out that if all the utilities in the country were to simply adopt the efficiency standards of California it would reduce our nation’s coal fired power use, the major contributor to our carbon footprint, by 60%. A recent article in the Camera by Steve Pomerance shows that there is a level of corporate arrogance that is unacceptable in any business, much less a utility, that is granted a monopoly. Their inside joke is that since they get a guaranteed return on their investments and are given guaranteed long term contracts, such as the one with Boulder, they see all their new power plants as simply another “billion dollar block of concrete.”  They don’t care if the new power plant is a clean renewable technology or even if it is needed. They can always encourage more wasteful energy use by their customers. They simply are happy to burden people with more debt. Xcel is not the proactive partner that we need to move to an efficient and carbon free energy economy.

Using well-developed dialoguing and visioning processes involving the entire community, people could develop new ways to organize themselves with community-supported agriculture, barter and alternative currencies, solar and wind energy, holistic and complementary medicine, and co-ops of all kinds.

Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson

Sustainability has been a buzz word for discussing the human/environment interactions for many years now. It has become kind of like the old saying that everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.

Most of the discussion about sustainability issues in modern human life centers around the use of resources and the damage that is being done to the life-supporting environment. Oil is a good example because it is both a resource that is rapidly being depleted and its use is causing potentially catastrophic damage to the environment. Few people start the discussion by questioning any of the assumptions that have made oil a “necessity.” Most people have some vague notion that we can continue the fossil-fueled consumer lifestyle by simply finding a clean, green energy source.  They seem to think the existing built environment and our society can just be painted green and go right on.

Every aspect of modern society from the buildings to the food supply  to the transportation system was developed based on the assumption that there are unlimited supplies of cheap fossil energy and that  there is no downside to using them. Those assumptions are clearly wrong and the implications of this are beyond most people’s ability to comprehend.    The question becomes, “What  actions make the most sense at this   point?” Should we expend a great deal of energy trying to keep the   systems, technologies, economy and rules that are based on these flawed  assumptions in place and simply try to make them “sustainable” or should we try something completely different.  Both courses of action have pros and cons.

The idea that we simply need to make some minor changes is clearly the path that the cons who are profiting from the structure of today’s society would like you to believe is possible.   There are lots of ads with the message, “Relax don’t worry.  We are the experts and will continue to provide you everything you need.”   They certainly don’t want anyone questioning assumptions much less taking responsibility for themselves.

If we continue to slave away trying to keep a sinking ship afloat we may reach shore … or we may not.  It may make more sense to build a lifeboat and set out in a new direction.  As there are no guarantees either way, the decision can be based on determining which of the options will allow for the most attractive lifestyle.  Many attempts to create sustainable options are only possible as long as the existing economic/technological/political structure continues to function. These are illusory attempts  at sustainability.  Paolo Soleri once said, “Self sufficiency is a concept with no basis in reality.”  This from the man who designed Arcosanti.  Nonetheless, if it is clear that aspects of the present system are fatally flawed, some experimentation with “lifeboats” is  prudent and quite possibly of great importance.

Many attempts to create alternative models are regressive – abandon the present systems and start from scratch. Going “back to the land” hoping to use human labor to try to wrest an existence from the land is not an attractive model. Many early attempts by Europeans to colonize newly “discovered” lands failed. Without continuous resupply from the “civilized” world it was simply impossible to survive on human labor, unless one was able to develop a stone age skill set. Some sense of what it was like was recently portrayed in the movie The New World.    The early colonists were trying to recreate civilization in a stone age  hunter gatherer world. They could either work themselves to death trying to build civilization from scratch or go native.

I like to  garden but very few gardeners get the majority of a years supply of calories from their own labor. We were liberated from subsistence agricultural labor by the mechanization/industrialization of  agriculture and despite the many problems with this system this is a good thing.  A friend was speaking to a farmer recently, and when asked about kitchen gardens, the farmer said it seemed much too tedious and he didn’t have much interest. He did his weeding at 150 acres an hour. The liberation from manual labor subsistence farming is what has made modern society possible. Two percent of the population grow the food for the rest of us. Most of   what we all do to make a “living” is,  strictly speaking,  superficial.   Our basic needs are met by a very small portion of the economic workforce. The implications of this are very positive.  Modern agriculture has many problematic and unsustainable aspects (nitrogen fertilizer being one) but it is an unquestionable success at efficient use of labor and resources to feed the world’s present population.   Almost everything else in an economy is to a large part excessive consumerism.

To understand sustainability we must question consumerism and address the concept of sufficiency.  This is very problematic for economists but they may be the most endangered segment of a future sustainable society. Again, an example that addresses the difficulty of  getting to sustainable from our present condition is energy use,  specifically our electric power system.  Society has become so completely dependent on central, power plant, grid-supplied electricity that no one ever questions the assumption that we need massive, continuous supplies of this elusive stuff. We have no concept of how much we use because it is invisible, but we certainly like the many energy services it provides. And because it is such a subtle and cheap way to provide energy services we use it in frivolous and unnecessary ways and we waste huge amounts of it for which we receive no real   benefit. Energy guru Amory Lovins’ most recent accounting gives an idea of how far beyond sufficiency we have been encouraged to go in terms of electric generating capacity, “… the U.S. has the potential to save 1.2 million gigawatt-hours—equal to displacing over 60 percent of America’s coal-fired generation.”

Like many other possible examples of excess consumption, we are blissfully ignorant of how far beyond sufficiency we have gone.  I often ask if we have reached peak energy stupidity yet. The answer is no. In the discussion of what a sustainable society might look like this is the first priority and one that causes many problems for economists who consider growth the unquestionable first assumption of all capitalist economic policy. What would it do to the national economy to eliminate over half of the $200 billion a year coal power business? That thought will give economists nightmares right up until the climate is no longer cooperating with the farmers to feed society.

Clearly, we need to make some pretty radical reassessments of our society. Start by questioning the assumptions.  It is important that we plainly see what our situation is. We need viable scenarios as we move towards   understanding what a sustainable future society will look like. Given the estimated time constraints for the possible failure of certain presently unsustainable systems, the development of sustainable community models is urgently needed. There are many barriers to the creation of such models. Some of these involve human behavior. Some of the most difficult to overcome are institutional.

It would certainly be tragic to see great human suffering caused because we couldn’t change the existing set of rules, but this is one of the reasons there are so few viable optional models today.  Some examples of model sustainable communities are to be found. The Amish can be viewed as one possible  example.  Gaviotas in Colombia is a very inspiring story.  And several communities are discussed in the book Builders of the Dawn and also in the out-of-print Context Magazine.

Essential to the concept of sustainable community is the need to live within our daily renewable energy income. This is made easily achievable with energy efficient design and building materials. The existing built environment is almost entirely dysfunctional, built based on the flawed assumptions of unlimited supplies of cheap fossil energy. We have known for many years how to plan developments and design buildings to use very little energy. With the use of proper insulation and passive solar design it is possible to reach renewable energy self sufficiency in our homes.  One example of such a building is   the Solargon.

Our chosen means of personal mobility, the car, is a truly amazing example of excess gone, well, excessive. We have the means to design and build very efficient models of personal mobility that can place our transportation energy needs well within the reach of personal home renewable energy systems. These technologies and concepts, taken together with the idea of a group of people with a shared sense of the values involved in creating a sustainable community, are easy to envision. However, it seems to be difficult to achieve –  otherwise wouldn’t we all be living sustainably?

Are you familiar with Saul Griffith?

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/want-to-go-green-buy-a-rolex-stop-paying-taxes/

http://www.energyliteracy.com/

http://www.wattzon.com/

Back in the day when all PV systems were stand alone the idea of making one’s own renewable energy was driven partly by the desire to take charge of one aspect of life that almost everyone in society had given over to the experts. We all loved the idea of getting off the grid. And we needed to make 100% of the energy we needed (although many people had generator backup). The shared knowledge of home power technology included many of the early ways to get more bang for the buck with using the most energy efficient appliances. The rule of thumb was for every $1 spent on efficiency there was a $3 reduction in the cost of the PV system generating the power. These ideas led many people to think long and hard about their lifestyle and what energy services they really needed and wanted.

Today we live in the world of grid tied PV. Few people are off the grid and few people with PV systems meet 100% of their “needs.” They don’t think about their lifestyle because they always have the grid to power that new plasma TV so they still live in an illusory world with no limits. People are not becoming more conscious of their personal energy use much less becoming aware of the daily solar cycles within which we all must live in order to create a sustainable world. Because people don’t understand their own energy behavior they fail to question the More Bigger Faster cornucopian fallacy that there is an endless supply of energy to power our every want and no down side to ever increased energy use.

Well there is that small issue of CO2, whatever that is, but “they” will figure that out (or maybe “they” are wrong about this climate thing) so we can continue consuming in ignorance. Disinformation is powerful stuff.

Over years of following the development of renewable energy there were several times when projects were proposed that seemed to me not to have been well thought through. Before the advent of grid tied inverters I remember a developer in a Colorado ski town was proposing to power all the new 10,000 sq. ft., above timberline (not passive solar designed) homes with PV systems. I couldn’t think of a better way to show that this solar thing doesn’t work. Rich people are the most likely group to be unclear on this energy thing. They do things like drive a Prius or a Tesla to the airport to take their private jet half way around the world. And the thought of them all showing up for their winter vacations and suddenly powering up a few thousand lights and dozens of hot tubs was sure to crash any PV system known. Another example was the federal government came up with the million solar roof program. One part of the proposal was to put PV on federal buildings. Unfortunately there is not enough roof space to install enough PV to power the energy inefficient buildings that our government owns.  Luckily, neither of these projects ever happened.

We have failed to question the assumptions upon which all of our buildings, food production, transportation and industry were built – the assumption of an unlimited supply of cheap energy. Energy so cheap we could ignore energy efficiency and build systems that were wasteful in the extreme. So wasteful that we are now beginning to see the environmental effects as well as the end of “endless” supplies. The days of ever increasing energy use are over and the implications for the existing buildings, transportation and industry (as well as our more-bigger-faster lifestyles) are disastrous.

There are many predicting doom but that, like the cornucopians’ ideas that we can meet the ever increasing demand with green power, also ignores the concept of energy efficiency.  We can get many of the same energy services for a minor fraction of the energy we have used in the past. We know how to build buildings that use very little energy (doesn’t help fix the one you live in but..). We can make light with a fraction of the power we once used.

And electric transportation will give 10 times the miles of mobility per dollar as gasoline. If I get my personal mobility with an EV and power it with PV from the sunshine that falls on my roof (instead of middle eastern terrorists – sorry I just couldn’t resist being inflammatory – but we do export a billion dollars a day mostly to countries that hate us), I have reduced the national debt, reduced my carbon footprint, reduced the need for resource wars, improved the air quality, kept money in the local economy and bought a hedge against all future increases in the cost of my mobility. I will never again be concerned about cost or supply shortage. I have more peace of mind and I have taken responsibility for the energy I use for personal mobility something that cannot be done with ICE technology. If we all do this we have created a virtual oil field right in our own neighborhood. And my EV is faster than your minivan.

If we question assumptions there are very different future scenarios and very different policies to reach that sustainable future. We certainly don’t need any more power plants, nuclear or otherwise. The question is not about peak oil or global warming. It is, “Have we reached peak energy stupidity yet?” The answer seems to be No.

One example of failing to question the assumptions is the attempt to power wasteful personal transportation with an alternative to oil. A plentiful supply of oil has allowed for the use of inefficient internal combustion engines and ever increasing and unnecessary vehicle power and size. There is nothing like oil. If there was Exxon would be selling us “that.” Trying to power the technology that uses oil with biofuels will not work although many seemingly smart people are trying to do just that. This doesn’t mean we can’t have personal mobility. We just have to question the assumption that the way we do it now makes sense. The 200+ horse power, 4000 pound, 10% efficient internal combustion engine car only makes sense if you have an endless supply of oil and no environmental downside to using it. If we had questioned this assumption 50 years ago we would be in a very different world today.

The problem with energy efficiency is that if I do the best I can and you don’t, it doesn’t work. This is the tragedy of the commons. Socialism is a good thing if we all share the same values. If we all understand our energy use and we all implement the best technologies we can have a renewable energy future that has most of the same features of our present profligately wasteful society. But at the present time it is stupid for me to carry your hot

tub/plasmaTV/wrongly oriented and poorly insulated house/giant SUV lifestyle any further up the ever increasing energy stupidity curve. (Gee, could there be a link between the increased energy prices of 2009 and the economic problems?)

If I do everything to make my life energy efficient I can easily reduce my home energy use to 1/6th the average. (200kWhr down from the national average of 1200kWhr/mo) That makes it easy to power 100% of my home energy use with PV. But if my PV system is grid tied I am dumping any extra of my valuable green energy into your wasteful lifestyle. If I can put any extra into a high value energy service that I can enjoy I reap the benefit rather that letting my neighbor waste it. If I put the extra PV power in my EV I am one happy tea-bagger.