Moving Like Water

One of the most frustrating things about the political season is watching the leading candidates carve out and then brag about the safest possible positions on the issues.

Scientific American Magazine has put together what they call a Solar Grand Plan focused on getting off foreign oil and cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Their path for reaching those goals: solar power. Lots of solar power. They also call for a DC-based transmission system to limit transmission losses and a power storage strategy based on such concepts as pressurized air, something I discussed some time ago.

Their plan could provide 69 percent of the U.S.’s electrical needs and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050.

In contrast, both Barack Obama’s plan and Hillary Clinton’s plan call for 25 percent of renewable energy by 2025 as well as several other focus group-tested positions. Now, you say, getting 25 percent of the way there by 2025 isn’t bad and gets you well on your way toward the SciAm goals. I don’t disagree. Except that it would leave you 44 percent of the way to go in 25 more years. Again, not necessarily impossible but my take is that there’s plenty of room for the candidates to get a little more aggressive here.

Now the SciAm plan omits some other opportunities that exist out there. Namely the huge potential of wind and tidal power, which has great potential in various areas of the country. Additionally, the article does hint at the needs for each region to provide for themselves, but I think that issue is underplayed. I would have no problem, however, with a solar system as a “jump-start” while we work toward a distributed system over time.

In other words:

Step 1: Derive all energy from U.S.-based sources.

Step: 2: Move all energy sources to renewables.

Step 3: Separate each region and have each area provide its own power, for example, the northwest should be on its own grid, the southwest, the center of the country in one or two sections and then the northeast and southeast.

Step 4: Separate each state. I live in Washington and there’s no reason Washington state couldn’t provide all of its own power. If it has excess, it could sell the remainder to other states that are suffering dips, but each state would take care of itself first.

Step 5: Each city should take care of its own needs. Same goes for counties. Seattle, where I live, should be putting together plans to generate enough power for itself. It’d be great for a progressive place such as this to be the only one with its lights on when the larger regional grid collapses.

Step 6: Next I’d love to see each neighborhood take care of their own needs as well. Imagine (relatively) smaller windmills hovering over city parks generating enough power for just the few hundred or thousand homes in the area.

Step 7: Last, but not least, it would be wonderful to see each home and business also taking care of itself. You can buy power off the grid if you need it, or provide 100% of your own power.

This graduated system of self-reliance provides the total freedom I think we all crave, as well as the indestructibility of the Internet. I think this could be done in 10 years. It’s like the old saying: You can do anything you want, just apply money. But if you compare the costs of this kind of a plan with what we’ve pissed away on the Iraq debacle, it’s obvious money shouldn’t be an obstacle.

As prices drop and technology advances, I believe all of these solutions will be advanced at different rates across the country, but it’d be great to also see more focused long-term thinking from our leaders.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Energy Politics, Solar Power. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.