"The Job of the Rest of Us..."

"...is to show that this can all work." That's how former President Bill Clinton summed up the biggest challenge facing green-energy advocates who are not in the federal government at the National Clean Energy Project Forum here in Washington, D.C. today. Clinton's point was that the U.S. is rapidly moving past the ideological stage of the debate about a green energy future -- the question now is how fast we can get it done in the real, as opposed to the abstract, policy world.

Evidence that things are changing very rapidly was evident all over the Newseum where we met this morning. The cast included: a former president (Bill Clinton); a former vice-president (and some would say elected president) Al Gore; the Senate majority leader and the speaker of the House; two Cabinet members; several Congressional committee chairs, two Nobel Prize winners (OK, double-counting, since one was Al Gore and the other was Energy Secretary Steve Chu); the most prominent labor leaders in the country; a major oil entrepreneur (Boone Pickens); the head of Wal-Mart; a former White House chief of staff; business executives; environmentalists (me, Bobby Kennedy, Van Jones); and regulators, both state and federal.

And what hot-button issue assembled this high-powered crew for four-and-a-half hours? Improving, modernizing, and strengthening "the grid," a topic that the moderator, U.N. Foundation president and former senator Tim Wirth, characterized as being mainly calculated to put people to sleep.

The official reason for the meeting was the release of a set of recommendations for how to solve the problem that everyone agrees we need a better grid but that no one wants to have it in their backyard or to pay for it. The recommendations, which a wide array of stakeholders had to agree on, struck a careful balance. But what was truly remarkable was that so many of the stakeholders felt that putting this solution into effect was important enough for them to devote a morning to symbolically inking the deal.

It's important and wonderful that a broad spectrum of Americans were able to agree conceptually on how to get green energy to market. But Clinton's point is important. It's even more important that an equally broad spectrum of folks sit down in their communities and make sure that we build the right facilities, in the right place, and on the right schedule -- by understanding that a green grid needs to be not only more robust but also more carefully sited and designed.

We're not there -- not even close. For example, in Southern California it's proving very difficult for Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to find a way to share the obvious transmission right-of-way for solar power from the California desert -- Interstate 10, which already has Edison transmission on its median strip. And because the Bureau of Land Management sets its royalty rates below those of the prevailing private market, solar and wind entrepreneurs have a perverse incentive to locate their facilities in the most pristine natural settings instead of in already developed (but often privately owned) locations.

The popular metaphor of the day is that we need an energy-delivery equivalent to the Interstate Highway System. Unfortunately, the current reality is that energy transmission is being handled in a way that's more akin to the railroad rush of the 19th century. The Interstate System was publicly planned and publicly accountable; it was seen a common resource. The railroads were privately planned and unaccountable -- and were seen as an opportunity for windfall profits. We can't let the smart grid fall prey to a 21st-century version of 19th-century robber baron capitalism -- and it easily could.

Comments

[LauraCunningham]

Thanks Carl, for pointing out how we should be objective about renewables and transmission siting. I have been hiking and enjoying the Mojave Desert, inlcuding Ivanpah Valley, since 1985. Stanford's climate scientist Dr. Christopher Field pointed out that melting arctic tundra from global warming could release dangerous amounts of stored organic carbon into the atmosphere. From what I've seen, the lush creosote, cactus, and yucca desert of the proposed Ivanpah concentrated solar project site has a much larger biomass of carbon per acre than tundra.

[research]

rooftop solar reduces grid load.

The smart grid is a good idea, but we don't need it to start massive rooftop solar installation, which many commercial buildings in sunny climes are already doing.

Only concentrated energy sources need an upgraded grid.

We do need standardized home and business rooftop solar connections to the grid. The price must come down.

Only when we have covered every appropriate rooftop should we we shift to concentrated remote sources.

[Overtone]

One solution is to turn cars, trucks and buses into power plants when parked. A never before commercialized source of energy, the Zero Point Field, is making that possible. Zero Point Energy is abundant, renewable and inherently cost-effective. Electric vehicles powered by ZPE will need no batteries or recharge. When parked, they will wirelessly be able to transmit up to 150 kW to the local utility. The sale of electricity may pay for the vehicles over a reasonable period of time. Cars so equipped will also be emergency power plants for homes and businesses. Mass production of such vehicles can happen within 5 years. Scientists and engineers will doubt this is possible. Their skepticism is justified until Independent Laboratory validation takes place. Demonstration Devices and toys will follow. No batteries required.

A second solution can be found by developing room temperature Ultraconductors into wire and cable. These remarkable materials can provide buried cables equivalent to overhead transmission lines in about the same time frame.

[TheBetterWay]

Music to my ears! We must rethink this insanity and make it right before it is too late.

Bright Source is proposing a 400 MW solar installation that will scrape 4,000 acres of undisturbed, prime Desert Tortoise habitat, consume 35 millions of gallons of water, burn natural gas anyway, and require long distance transmission to the end user 160,000 homes. The same 400 MW can be produced on the roofs of those same homes with a modest 2.5 kw PV solar system, all without the permanent destruction of 4,000 acres of carbon sequestrating intact ecoststem. The Tortoises get to survive (we all know how well relocation works), demand on current transmission lines is actually reduced, the power is clean without steam generation and massive water use, and a real reduction in CO2 emmissions is realized.

It is unconscionable for us to call ourselves environmentalists and then advocate for the potential destruction of millions of acres of healthy habitat when there is a better alternative. Distributed renewables are faster to implement, require no new toxin spewing transmission lines, no scraping of land, no eminent domain, and no obscene water consumption. Now that's a model an environmentalist can really get behind.

Thank you Carl for shining the light on this issue. Before any of these Big Solar steam producers are even built, Germany will have already added 10,000 MW of building integrated and rooftop PV solar capacity to their energy infrastructure. We can do even better.

[sheila]

You are absolutely correct that we are being OVERRUN my Big Energy mercenaries like Bright Source. We are shocked at the scale of destruction advocated by greenwashers who try to destroy REAL solutions like rooftop solar in favor of deadly, planet-warming boondoggles like Green Path North, Sunrise Powerlink, Ivanpah and RETI CREZ designations.

It is unbelievable that the people we trust to SAVE our environment are pushing so hard to increase GHGs, destroy carbon-sequestering ecosystems like the Mojave, slaughter millions of helpless plants and animals and permanently kill fragile, irreplaceable critical ecosystems for private profits.

The "RETI" process is "siting transmission and generation in the least environmentally and financially costly places," but it is run by 90% Big Energy, 10% greenwashers from Northern CA who know nothing about the desert. REAL stakeholders - ratepayers, property owners, local communities, governments, conservationists, national or state parks, military, etc. were banned. They pretend Big Energy /Transmission is best for the state when rooftop solar is, then falsify their data to intentionally skew the results. Green Path and Sunrise, which are nowhere near breaking ground, are "completely built" in RETI analysis, so they have no environmental or financial costs, which means all projects along them are fast-tracked. Liars!!

Thank you for starting to speak out on the corruption and environmental devastation Big Energy / Big Transmission cause. I look forward to hearing you promote the ONLY solution - point of use generation - and the policies like AB 811 and German-style feed in tariffs.