The potential for truly distributed energy, truly distributed power, could be the contribution of solar energy that equals or even exceeds the importance of its reduction in carbon pollution.
It is no coincidence that electrical energy is also called power, the same word that also refers to the ability to free yourself or control others. In recent history, almost all development has taken the form of increasingly concentrated infrastructure, which in turn is concentrated power. Big concrete, justified in the name of increased efficiency, rules the day.
In the 20th century, big concrete was sold as beneficial, and perhaps on the context of the times, it was, at least for the prosperous people in the more prosperous countries. Hoover Dam killed numerous ecosystems and buried several dozen workers in its big concrete, but has delivered clean electric power in the decades since.
No more. Show me a big concrete project, and I’ll show you another tragedy in the making. Distributed energy, on the other hand, has stunning transformative value.
We have been ruled by our geography since the dawn of time. Thousands of years ago, it was entirely physical geography, in a natural environment where we were essentially visitors. Ancient myths were shaped by the personality of the landscape where people lived, such as the capricious gods of the fertile crescent (land of flash floods).
Amazingly pervasive and enduring cultural effects of our physical geography are discussed to great effect in Malcolm Gladwell’sOutliers. These effects even outlive the presence of people in a certain setting, as exemplified by the discussion of how, in eastern Kentucky, the effects of being descended from a shepherding culture are clearly present even in the absence of sheep.
With more development, progressively more of our geography includes human artifice: human geography. Our infrastructure, overlying and still defined by the physical geography beneath, is the single most important factor in all of our lives. Buildings, made from the materials reasonably available in the region. Power, until recently generated from sources at least somewhat nearby. Roads, going where conditions allow and connecting places of work to places to live.
Throughout this time, infrastructure has become progressively more and more concentrated, in the form of large power plants, large manufacturing facilities, large cities. Large corporations controlling progressively greater portions of that infrastructure.
These days, our geography, that core controlling force in our destiny, consists primarily of the flow of goods that we consume. Electricity from the power plant via the power lines, gasoline from the refinery via the gas station, food from the factory. A tangled web of deliveries of which we are entitled to partake as long as we are good little boys and girls, and as long as that web stays intact.
Most recently, we have seen the most stunningly stupid, insanely risky change, the logical conclusion of this increased concentration. The long supply line, extending across oceans even for core necessities, allows for even further concentration of production, and power.
This concentration is of course a means of control. People depend on the long supply lines, literally for their lives. Only very large entities are able to operate the large, lengthy, and complex supply lines. Ultimately, people need the corporations even as the corporations bleed the people.
I think that, once upon a time, people thought that increased global trade would reduce concentration and conflicts. Get products from other countries, understand those countries better. Eat Danish Fontina, understand Danes a little better.
How wrong that has turned out to be. Vastly increased volume of global trade, in the multitude of cases where it has (often intentionally) created or exacerbated dependencies, creates conflict. When a vital resource becomes less available due to global climate change or any other reason, the addicts will be desperate. Very large corporations will be there to provide for the desperate, at a steep price.
Now, let’s exercise some imagination. It doesn’t take much. Imagine your residence generating more electricity than you need, using on-site solar generation.
You own the infrastructure. You power your house, you charge your car each night. On sunny days, you accumulate power in local storage. You can choose to sell power to the grid, and the grid is required to buy it. You might buy some power from the grid at times, but usually you don’t have to. Power is sold, not just from generating stations, but also peer to peer, where the utility only takes a transmission fee rather than the full tariff.
Electric power is just one element of the long supply line, but it is the keystone. Power is power.
Distributed power is the first step in what could be a profound psychological, as well as actual, change. It allows for the realization that individuals, families, small businesses, and communities don’t need to depend for their survival on gigantic outside entities. It allows for the ability to not just scrape by, but to thrive with fewer things contributed by the long supply chain.
It starts with power, and can move to other things. Food is obvious. I’m not saying that everyone should grow their own food (well ….?). However, any region absolutely can grow a majority of the food it needs, given not only ubiquitous clean and distributed electricity, but perhaps more importantly, the realization that yes, it can be done and would make everyone’s lives better.
Empowerment at a personal, community, and regional level will be about realizing that we can provide for ourselves – in style. Back yard gardens, locally owned and operating businesses. Local resource recovery for local manufacturing. These can repair the erosion in our personal independence which has been ongoing since that fellow came by your ancestor’s house in 1910 or so and said “just plug in here, you’ll like it!” This does not at all mean trying to end global trade. It means moving global trade back to the role that it should properly occupy – to enrich our lives. I mean, I like Danish Fontina. I want to get some every so often. When I do, I recognize where it came from – it’s a special thing. Recently, I showed my daughter the place in our world atlas (she likes Fontina too).
What it can and should mean is the end of mass movement of depersonalized, non-special goods across oceans. Dog food from China? WTF? Oil from Saudi Arabia, coming all the way here so it can be lit on fire. Coal here to China, combusted there and ending up back in our air as pollutants.
At a larger scale, distributed power is also a means to hugely reduce conflict on a regional and global scale. Make no mistake about this: any entity that depends for its life on an outside supply of a vital resource will stop at nothing to continue securing that resource. Currently, the “vital interest” of the United States includes our continued ability to import oil. In that context, it is sobering to realize what “stop at nothing” has entailed to date and could entail in the future.
Distributed power helps solve this in three ways. Firstly, power itself (fuel to make it) is one of the vital resources that is subject to conflict. Reducing the long supply line of power will result in a huge reduction in reason for conflicts.
Secondly, electric power has a way of solving other problems. Electricity pumps water, operates equipment that cleans water, boils water, heats spaces, cools spaces. Electricity helps grow food. When food is growing well, people tend their gardens instead of looking for someone to kill.
Thirdly, distributed power bypasses the choke point of the corrupt power brokers. Providing power at the most local level possible, down to and including residences, means nobody has their hand on the off switch. Nobody is positioned to skim a few hundred million off the multi-billion dollar big concrete "solution". The Mubaraks and Koches of the world rely on big concrete to concentrate money so that it is easier to steal, so the solution is to better distribute everything into many smaller, more local projects. They'll always find a way to apply the Koch Method to you, but we can reduce the big heists by making the bags of money smaller.
Does this sound like a smokeless pipe dream? It could be much closer than we think. Solar costs are plummeting. Coal has a total loaded cost, counting health effects (you know, death) that is higher than solar, right now. Perhaps most importantly, any individual solar installation does not have the ruinous permit lead time that all big concrete projects (rightfully) have. Ultimately Solar is more scalable than any big concrete alternative because of this. The only thing preventing an immediate, massive, kudzu-like growth of solar is a failure to recognize costs of combustion fuels for what they are.
With distirbuted clean energy, we can fundamentally change our human geography. Instead of beggars at the downstream end of the long supply chain, enduring the abuse du jour about how little we contribute and how grate ful we should be to even have a job, we can be peers. We can bring our own power.
From global to local, distributed clean power is the one and only possible path to disentangle the corruption and needless complexity of the long supply chain and the conflict that it creates. Not just clean. Not just power. Distributed. Distributed clean power.