Leadership Roundtable: Getting from Here to There

Thank you Stephen for hosting this frank discussion. I hope some of our policymakers were listening in, as we've finally passed the giddiness into a mature phase in discussions on renewables.

Parts of the discussion hinted at distributed, localized energy production but stopped short of recommending demand reduction by end users through better building design and energy conservation. I think this is the missing link in an overall energy strategy, and would put more emphasis on innovation at the local level. Our top-down, grid-scale energy policies have depressed the grass-roots innovations that originally drove the renewables movement. An example of this top-down strategy: in Tennessee, Senator Corker reallocated all of our state's share of Reinvestment Act energy funding back into the DOE rather than into local energy startups. As a result, we've yet to see anything economically compelling in renewable usage at the local level.

Kudos on your well-earned journalism awards, and keep up the great work!

There was a discussion on the blogsite www.grist.org about whether end-users will "walk away" from utilities by reducing/managing their demand, and installing local power/heat sources, i.e. PV, solar thermal hot water, microwind, wood/pellets stoves for heat, and finally, some battery storage. The question was if this will force some utilities to go bankrupt. My conclusion is that the potential is in fact there for a very large number of end-users to significantly reduce their consumption of utility-generated power, but that huge commercial player instincts will fight it in every way, ethical or not. Common examples are residential homeowner association rules to forbid PV on roofs, forbid microwind, forbid solar thermal, "no-smoke" rules to forbid wood burning in home stoves, etc.

Correction-that debate on bankrupting utilities was on this site! Very relevant discussion. The dominating commercial utility (non-municipal) business model just will not let the necessary changes happen. Let these dinasours go bust. Good riddance.

There was reference in the podcast at about 25:48 to the "scale of transformation". The example used was 2 MW wind turbines, and we need 2 million of these. Big, long-term job. Friends, offshore turbines will soon be 10-20 MW capacity, so the scale of the job could be as small as 1/10 of what is referred to in the podcast! Offshore turbinies can largely be placed close to coastal cities, so that the task to build the required transmission infrastructure is much easier than the cross-continental high voltage lines from windy mid-west to east coast etc. This is very, very doable, viable and will be profitable. There is no technology limit in this particular context.

I discuss decentralized renewable power generation (at the "Joe Six Pack" level), within a free-market model, here: https://sites.google.com/site/freemarketsolarpower/

My analysis is based on a working 10KW Solar PV system atop a new building prototype that is not "net-zero," but in fact a positive-energy home (produces more electricity than it consumes) -- all for $87.50/sq.ft.

The goal is to alter mass-thinking on housing and "green."

Alter what? The belief that green has to cost more than brown ("stick-built," net energy-consumptive) housing.

In fact, I'm proving that positive energy, super-efficient homes that also combine home-business space can cost LESS than stick-built homes. Remember "a chicken in every pot?" I'm exploring a self-sufficient energy production array on every roof.

Only I advocate self-sufficiency borne of free market mechanisms, not government hand-outs. Ayn Rand trumps Give-A-Way Greenies.

What's the catch? Only one: Aesthetics. As you'll see from the photos I furnish, there's a new fashion trend out there: The Neo-Industrial Look. We know it's a trend because I'm doing it. The photos are available on my site, just click.

Oh, and did I mention that my building's 85% recyclable and can be built from recyclable metal?

Fellow-travelers are welcome to contact me (on Facebook: "James Christopher Desmond") for a guided tour.