I have been observing clean energy since 1999, and since then I’ve watched some pretty amazing advances, and some pretty pathetic progress.  Technology is making advances, but the practice and social aspects of change are not keeping pace.  I live in North America, and here we use more energy per person than anywhere else in the world, something like 5 times as much per person as other industrialized nations. We are wasteful, affluent and often appear to not care about the impact that our “lifestyles” have on others around the globe, and on the environment.  Looking to the future, it seems that this cannot continue forever, and that it would be better for us to change while we have the choice, rather than waiting until we are forced to make a drastic change.

 

coal power plant Flickr Photo Credit: Velaia (ParisPeking)

 

Energy is required to manufacture, to transport, and even to consume what has been manufactured. Currently much of the energy we have is produced by large corporations in a polluting, unsustainable and inequitable fashion that by definition of corporation and free market, has as its primary goal “making corporations money” and as its secondary goal “maintaining the status quo of those making the money”.  Neither of those two goals will necessarily; Protect consumers from unfair profiteering, protect the natural environment, promote innovation, or allow for sustainable development of energy infrastructure.

 

Clean energy from wind power, flickr photo credit: kilobar

 

I propose that we are stuck in this place because of some of our beliefs.  I don’t claim to have a complete picture, but I’d like to suggest that there are a number of myths that support the status quo and thereby hinder us from moving towards cleaner energy.  Lets debunk some myths that are commonly circulated:

Myth: There is a shortage of energy:

Actually every hour, the sun showers the earth with more energy than the world’s entire population consumes in a whole year. (source: Sesci.ca)

Myth: Clean energy will result in a loss of jobs.

Recently I heard a statistic that more Americans are employed by the US wind industry than the US coal industry.  I think we will see a shift in jobs.  New jobs might include designing, producing, selling and delivering parts for; solar cells, geothermal systems and heat exchangers, bio-gas facilities, wind turbines, hydro turbines, power storage and regulating equipment.  Research and development to improve the efficiency and quality of these systems. 

Myth: Clean energy costs too much money

From a consumer perspective, in British Columbia, the residential rate for electricity is 7.2 cents per KWH and 85% of our power comes from hydro dams.  In keeping with Moore’s law, solar cells are becoming about twice as efficient every year (as solar cell manufacturers purchase the technology no longer needed by the likes of Intel and AMD).  A Geothermal system installed at a cost of $10,000 when a house is built can provide heating AND cooling at about 1/4 of the cost of conventional methods.  So if $275 / month is normal, that means $825 in annual savings and a breakeven point of about 12 years.  (Those with better numbers are welcome to comment).  So likely a case by case comparison depending on what options are available and what energy costs are needs to be done.  Certainly some forms of cleaner energy production won’t be available in all locations.  When we start factoring in “health” and “social justice” (no blood for oil etc) it quickly becomes apparent that there are some costs not fairly represented on the balance sheet.

Myth: Clean energy is only for granola eating hippies or tin-hat wearing wackos

Since utilities buy and sell power using the infrastructure of electrical transmission lines, your power could be purchased from anywhere.  Without you knowing, your utility could purchase some power from a coal plant or a wind farm, and that clean energy would seamlessly appear in your house’s electrical system.  As stated earlier, in British Columbia, 85% of electricity used is from renewable (rainwater powered) hydro dams.  So clean energy is something any of us could be using, whether we enjoy granola or not.

Myth: Clean energy is experimental or in its infancy, not ready for serious commercial use

Despite the persistence of solar energy displays and fuel-cell displays at local science fairs, these technology are actually well developed.  Consider early designs of the steam engine which used “wet ropes” to ensure a seal for the piston.  We have much more advantage now.  In Denmark, the last time I checked, 20% of the nation’s electricity was being generated via wind turbines.  Denmark with it’s shallow coastal areas realized that 7km offshore, the wind farms have nothing blocking the breeze and they are essentially silent and invisible as far as humans are concerned. Solar found a boost near its inception with the space race of the 60s if I recall correctly, and so represents a technology that has received barely 50 years of serious development.  Perhaps solar finds itself in an awkward adolescence where we can see the potential, but we aren’t quite ready to turn over the reins.  Solar is a de-facto standard for remote installations like track side railway equipment in the Rockies, marine equipment marking channels, roadside traffic signs and solar calculators.  So it seems the technology is there, the adoption however is wanting.

Myth: Coal energy is cheap

Not really, you need coal mines, transportation infrastructure, generating plants or furnaces to burn the coal, lots of air land and water to receive the sooty pollution and CO2. There has been the human health cost of mining and breathing that dirty air.  An amazing amount of effort has been invested in coal energy, some of the excavators have buckets as big as a house. Leaving giant scars on the surface of the earth.  Since the mining of coal and burning of coal are centralized activities, this concentrates the energy in the hands of a few (those who own large coal generating plants), now there is the added cost of distribution, such a system puts a wealthy few in a place to set the price of electricity for the people who purchase it. Coal is a non-renewable resource, which means once it is used, there is no more coal to replace it.  Much like the dinosaurs who contributed to the coal, it will soon go extinct.

Myth: All energy needs to be generated using one method (All wind/ All hydro etc)

All or nothing thinking makes it very easy for a person to dismiss clean energy.  However, a diversity of generating methods allow for a lessened impact on the environment and resilience in the event of a shortage of any one kind of energy generation (a shortage of rain one year might reduce the power that can be generated using hydro dams, when the wind stops blowing wind turbines are idle, when there are no waves, wave generation produces no power, when it is nighttime, solar generation isn’t effective.

Myth: Energy production must be entirely clean.

While that is a worthy goal, it isn’t immediately attainable by most of North America.  The myth is an error in thinking, a false dichotomy that says a half way solution, or a marginal improvement is worthless.  This flies in the face of experience that teaches us that most real improvement is incremental and continuous.  In other fields marginal improvements are celebrated and embraced, like the medical discovery that consuming baby aspirin fights the chance of strokes and heart attacks occurring.  If we can even REDUCE our dependence on unsustainable dirty energy generation, we are moving in the right direction.  So lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater, when we see improvement.  Lets embrace any move in the right direction.  One encouraging tidbit I have to share is that according to the Danish Wind Association (sorry if I got the name wrong guys).  A wind turbine cancels out it’s own environmental impact (refining the steel, machining, transportation, installation, access roads etc. in 2 months of full-time operation.  2 months is a fantastic payback for erasing ones own tracks so to speak. 

Myth: Doing the right thing must provide higher profits than taking the lazy way out.  

Somehow many of us have adopted the moronic thinking that somehow doing the right thing should be cheaper.  We hear things like “Gee that wouldn’t pay for itself for 10 years, I’m not interested”, or “Gee that has a $10,000 initial capital cost” (as the guy signs a 30 year mortgage for the $500,000 house…) Sometimes doing the right thing will be as expensive or more expensive than doing the thing that will potentially poison the air. 

Myth: Higher efficiency stoves/ furnaces / etc will allow us to be responsible while still using carbon based energy

While it’s true (and commendable) that efficiency for gas furnaces and other items are improving, this is really little more than damage control. (putting the filter on the cigarette and claiming it’s healthier to smoke).  Carbon based fuels are not renewable, meaning we can’t sustain their consumption.  Carbon based fuels release CO2, CO and other pollutants into the air we breathe, risking our health.  It is telling (and not commonly understood) that many furnaces burning “natural gas” may expel 20-30% of their heat energy up the chimney where it does not benefit the homeowner.  “Higher efficiency” generally means cleaner more complete combustion so you are wasting less energy.  We need to move away from dirty unhealthy unsustainable methods and start seeding the clean sustainable technologies that will outlast carbon.  (Anybody know how much longer the Sun is expected to last?)

Myth: North America is innovative in energy production.

If Green-wash were a clean energy innovation, this would be true.  It would seem that GM killed the (EV1) electric car despite people offering to buy out their leases.  Many subdivisions in attractive neighbourhoods have covenants on the properties preventing people from putting up clothes lines or solar installations on their roofs because they are “unsightly”.  North Americans consume more energy, more products and more packaging than anyone else in the industrialized world.  Most jurisdictions in North America have been very slow to permit/encourage net-metering and other progressive measures which would encourage de-centralized independent power production.  North America keeps proposing “carbon offset credits” and other measures which essentially permit some fancy accounting and transfer of money without fundamentally addressing how the power is created. (Essentially it is purchasing the “right” to pollute by putting money in the pockets of folks who are doing the right thing.)  Did you catch how the goal isn’t to improve, its to “offset”?  North America has incredibly skilled labour, good working conditions, lots of money and…. we are not showing anywhere near the leadership that is required to turn energy production around and get it pointed in the right direction.

Myth: If I can’t buy it at Walmart it isn’t really “available” (yes I heard this one)

Somewhere along the line we lost our spirit of invention, our willingness to risk, research and investigate.  Anyone reading this, has the most powerful research tool (Google?) and the most powerful shopping network. (Ebay?) at their fingertips.  Don’t wait for Walmart to stock the $10 home fusion generators.  Take some initiative and be the first on your block! 🙂 

I hope…

that if we could clear the air by addressing more of these myths, by getting the green-wash out of the room, by recognizing how bad the situation is, by encouraging government that would promote innovation that ordinary citizens could participate in.  That we would see noticable progress.  (Note: this is not the same as us sitting around watching our big TVs, waiting for government to “fix it”.)  Then we could find ourselves in the environment that nurtured the Renaissance of clean energy.  Lets hope!  Actually, join me and lets get out there and start making a difference.  Anyone want to start an “at cost solar system/ geothermal system” mail-order charity?” 🙂

Are there some other myths you’ve been observing?  Add them in the comments.

Greg.

In improving Quality, continual improvement through the practice of incremental refinement is a powerful approach.

For example, as I drive home I have a route that works quite well. It is the most direct path between two points or the fastest path between two points. As I go along I start to notice things. Hey, people are turning off here, I wonder why or hey, Google disagrees with me and thinks it knows it better route. (Google maps that is, Google doesn’t talk to me yet…) Or hey, I wonder where that road goes it comes out at an intersection and looks busier than the road I took previously. Through experience we don’t become experts at driving down new roads but we become experts driving down the roads that we know. So with each opportunity to observe a contrary point of view each opportunity to experience the effect of plans. We are in a position to improve and to do better.

I believe in continual refinement. Let’s draft a document, present it to some other knowledgeable people and have them critique it. Then lets present it to our customers and have them shoot it full of holes. After each critique and review, we see problems and we fix them, so it becomes better and better and better until we have a really good document. The alternative is to try and get things perfect before we benefit from the insight and correction we might be offered. Producing PERFECT work is the realm of those who fear that the customer will discover they are not perfect.  In producing PERFECT work (which is really just unreviewed work) Those doing the writing will tend to overthink second guess and overcorrect the work in the hopes that it will not fail, this extra “dilligence” will result in an increased cost that may or may not pay off in acceptance by the customer.

So, let’s put it out so the customers can test it.  Every time the work encounters a problem, we hear about it and we’re able to improve our documentation. Things that we anticipated would be a problem, are not.  However those that we never would have anticipated become problems. We let our customers help us achieve quality through continual and repeated refinement.

In the case of a business process that is being refined, where incremental change is possible (and it isn’t always) staff experience less disruption, maintain more productivity and generally experience less stress caused by change.

Some customers I worked with had been drafting some webpages which would represent their department and department’s initiatives.  They had these pages in draft form for 3 years, during which time, none of their customers could read the information they had been thoughtfully compiling.  The information by that point, ironically was out of date and would require updating.  Their desire to get the information absolutely perfect had effectively removed the entire benefit of compiling the information in the first place.

Often in the IT environment where I work, we wrestle with the need for information that should be documeted, but which has not been. Even if we had partial information, outdated information, or incorrect information that would be preferable to NO INFORMATION.  At least partial information gives you a place to start. A contact, a server name, a vendor’s 1800 number.  So I am through my experience a fan of work that is created imperfect, and then refined as opportunity presents itself. 

Well, this document has been sitting in draft for a while, so I’m going to kick it out there.  Maybe though it it incomplete, it will be of some benefit.  Let me know what you think, and I’ll improve it as we go.

Now I’m only interested in addressing change that moves us from an undesirable state to a better state. And I’m only interested in addressing change that is intentional, requiring the will of people to accept it and successfully make a change. There is this principle at work, that people tend to look to a perfect state, and if they can’t achieve that perfect state, then they won’t even attempt to improve things at all.

I’ll apologize, this article has been delayed because I’ve been bogged down with examples and keep missing the essence of what I’m trying to capture for you. I see the process like a bell curve. At first we are blithely continuing on doing something harmful. Then there is information introduced that leads us to believe that what we are doing may not be all good and perfect. We resist the idea, we like the status quo, some early adopters start shifting away from harmful activity. Following this there is a less harmful activity offered, and it becomes more popular/accessible to do things the new way, but the new way is still causing harm. Eventually the information, the education and the innovation continue, and people are moved from doing lots of harm, to doing less harm, to doing no harm, to actually reversing the process and undoing harm (repairing cumulative damage from prior activity).

We saw this with the hole in the ozone layer. We were using CFCs and other chemicals that actually caused a depletion of high altitude ozone, which showed up most obviously at the South Pole. Through education about what was going on, we as a global community were able to see harm, see the cause of the harm, make changes to reduce the harm, eliminate the harm and even remedy the harm.

Or take smoking. 50 years ago in North America it was passed off as “sophisticated”, healthy, normal, fashionable, and social. Education about the effects of smoking has been difficult to absorb. People didn’t want to give up their sophistication, their habit, the social aspects of smoking, or their FREEDOM!!! Please someone get me a flag. Even the cigarette companies started “reducing harm” they added filters, bigger filters, reduced tar etc in an attempt to make their products less harmful or decrease the perception of their harm. (How could breathing a carcinogen be bad for me? I breathed it through a paper filter.) Now we have people quitting, and their lungs by wonderful design are actually recovering with the risk of nasty diseases cut by as much as half 1 year after quitting. (We aren’t out of the woods with smoking yet are we?)

Education, publication, and dissemination of information come first. These make qualitative judgements on our actions “smoking may cause cancer” -> “smoking causes cancer” -> “Second hand smoke hurts your children you horrible person”. Now Judgement is a loaded word so lets use the relatively neutral word “evaluation”. An evaluation of a course of action is that it is not beneficial. This is judgement or discernment, or discrimination in the classic sense, but in our North American culture where discriminating shoppers sound horrible and where judging someone’s actions sounds intolerant, we are better off with retaining the idea of evaluating something sans baggage. Nobody likes to have their actions evaluated, and find that the evaluation requires them to change how they are living. But Education and evaluation create an opportunity for change. They show us the door, walking through it is up to us. This education and evaluation is not enough to continue on this pattern of change for the better. There needs to be will as well.

By this point in your life, you are familiar with the resistance of people to change how they do things. Big industry didn’t develop a conscience, they were forced to pollute less by legislation. Very few smokers successfully quit the first time they hear about health risks. There are always explanations for why we don’t change including. It can’t be done, it is hard, it is costly, it is inconvenient, it would hurt the economy, the alternatives aren’t much better, I was born this way, this is my right, and I don’t want to.

Will is essential in making a change. Without will the opportunity to change is merely academic. An interesting theory to be tossed around at the dinner table and then forgotten. The will to improve must stand strong in the face of an entrenched status quo, and in the face of active resistance and even counter-information.

e.g. “The link between human activity and global warming has not been proven” says the senator from the United States who received the majority of his campaign contributions from oil companies… 

Where there is a will, there is a way.  This way can be made easier through innovation (legislation, technology breakthroughs, new mindsets).

Now wanting to do no harm, or receive no harm is worthy, but it takes something more to pull people beyond the point where they stop hurting themselves or their children.  There needs to be a real self-lessness, or a real love that takes place in order to move into the healing phase.  The accountants won’t push us there because they are terrified of the costs of doing more than is required.  The lawyers were satisfied the moment we stopped harming, and are terrified that our attempts to heal could go wrong and cost us dearly. Its the lovers who need to lead this charge.  The idealistic dreamers turned world changers who move beyond “hurting others less” to “not hurting others” to “healing others”.

Lets test out this pattern with a real life example that is bound to have some people plugging their ears and singing “lalala I can’t hear you”.

Our cars consume gasoline that is refined from non-renewable fossil fuels. They produce exhaust that is deadly poison. (If you were to fill a room with exhaust and breath it for a short period of time you would die.) It is a scientific fact that there are a finite number of years of fossil fuels left on earth (http://www.energybulletin.net/659.html), and only a fraction of those fuels can be extracted at reasonable expense. So essentially by driving a gasoline powered car, I’m ensuring that humans consume what little fossil fuels the earth has left. Now the ideal state would be that my vehicle is powered by something plentiful (water) and produces no pollution (clean air). Then I could drive my car with impunity knowing I’m doing no harm (in terms of fuel consumption and air pollution). However, GM, Toyota, Honda, Ford, Chrysler, Mazda and others have not started selling cars that don’t consume fossil fuels or pollute the air. So today at reasonable cost I can’t have the perfect car.

My desire to leap to “perfect” is what makes this change impossible. Were I willing to purchase a car that gets gas mileage / kilometerage? that was twice as good, I could effectively cut my pollution in half, and effectively cut in half my consumption of fossil fuels. Were I able to commute to work with 2 other people, I would effectively cut the pollution from my driving by 2/3 for the days we carpooled. Were I to do both, I could cut my pollution to 1/6 of previous levels. That is a hugely significant change.

Sometimes what blinds us to the possibility of improvement is our insistence on having our cake and eating it too. People think of the 2 weeks a year they spend on summer vacation and insist on purchasing an SUV with lots of “cargo capacity”, which they proceed to drive to work the other 50 weeks a year. (effectively a big empty metal balloon). There is an un-willingness to “sacrifice” (drive an efficient subcompact car), so the improvement in gas mileage becomes negative. I don’t want to carpool with people as that would put constraints on my “lifestyle”, versus I can carpool 1 day per week.  We tell ourselves stories, that are eerily similar to the stories the marketeers tell us, to justify our reluctance to improve and change.

I see incremental change as the best hope of reaching an ideal state. It is slower in terms of total change, but it is easier in terms of disruption, it is easier in terms of economics (consumer and producer).  It is easier in terms of social change and behavioural improvement.  It is far easier to plan a trip to the neighbours than it is to plan a trip to Grandma’s house, but if the neighbour’s house is on the way to Grandma’s house, then the journey in the right direction has already begun.

Do you see places where this pattern of better versus perfect emerges?

Over at FastCompany.com Charles Fishman wrote an insightful article about Compact Flourescent Lightbulbs and their growing acceptance. 

“For years, compact fluorescent bulbs have promised dramatic energy savings–yet they remain a mere curiosity. That’s about to change… For two decades, CFLs lacked precisely what we expect from lightbulbs: strong, unwavering light; quiet; not to mention shapes that actually fit in the places we use bulbs. Now every one of those problems has been conquered. The bulbs come on quickly; their light is bright, white, steady, and silent; and the old U-shaped tubes–they looked like bulbs from a World War II submarine–have mostly been replaced by the swirl. Since 1985, CFLs have changed as much as cell phones and portable music players.”

Personally we have put CFLs in our house in all the places where they make sense, and it feels good to be getting decent light for less money.  It even makes us feel better about leaving the lights on for safety or comfort without feeling like we’re being (as) wasteful.  So head on over and read about Compact Flourescent Lightbulbs .