Energy 2.0

Another post on yet another topic ... this time, energy. There's been a lot of discussion lately about energy policy in the U.S., especially centering around independence from foreign oil. Also, Obama seems to be focusing on spending some federal money on upgrading the national infrastructure and building alternative energy sources. All of these discussions got me thinking about how we currently obtain and use energy, and about how this should, and hopefully will, evolve in the next decade.

Currently, we have a very monolithic approach to energy. By monolithic, I mean that we overwhelmingly use fossil fuels for energy, and we just move the fossil fuels to wherever we need them. The Middle East has a lot of oil, so energy consuming nations like the U.S., India and China spend a lot of money to ship the oil to them.

We even do this within the U.S. The northern plains and Appalachia have a lot of coal, so we haul thousands of tons of it on trains to power plants in more populated areas in the northeast and south. Basically, we just always assume that energy is produced by fossil fuels, so geographic areas which need more energy must import more fossil fuels.

The direction which I think energy production needs to take is to produce much more energy locally by taking advantage of the characteristics of the environment and climate in which the energy is needed. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, wave, nuclear, clean coal and oil all can be used in areas in which they make sense, rather than shipping fossil fuels all over the globe.

Let's look at my hometown of Phoenix, AZ. This place has a lot of sunshine. The sun causes higher than average instances of sunburn and skin cancer here, but it can also generate a lot of energy. Why don't we make use of that energy, instead of just letting it fry us? We have a lot of open desert which could be turned into fields of solar panels or reflectors for focusing sunlight on steam pipes for running generators. We have a zillion buildings and parking lots which do nothing with the sunlight that falls on them, except get really hot. How difficult would it be to put solar panels on building roofs or to add covers to parking lots, then put solar panels on top of those? We'd get shade to park our cars in and electricity to use. We could use the energy generated to keep buildings cool, keep the lights on, etc.

We could even go one step further and start using electric cars. While you're at work, you plug your electric car in to the solar array on top of the covered parking. After work, your car is cooler and you don't have to pay for gas.

Some of you are probably saying, "That's great, but what about places that get cloudy all winter?" True, solar probably won't work, but we can use other types of energy generation that do make sense. Most of the Great Plains of America have a lot of wind, so we can build wind farms that can harness the wind for power generation. Some parts of the American West have a lot of geologic activity, so geothermal generation would makes sense. Iceland is already taking advantage of their natural geothermal activity to meet most of the island's power needs.

Even some of the dirtier power generation methods could still be used. Clean coal still produces some emissions, but in areas which have a lot of coal, why not use it to meet energy needs for the next couple of decades? Sure, it would be nice to completely eliminate the use of hydrocarbons and be green, but continuing to use domestic coal and oil would help meet the shorter-term goal of energy independence. Also, if we were using coal and oil closer to their sources, we'd save the energy used to ship them all over the country.

Generating energy from local sources is a big departure from our current model of energy distribution and use. Since I'm a technogeek sort of guy, I call this Energy 2.0. It really requires a different way of thinking about energy and requires a large federal investment in order to build the new infrastructure required to make it work.

First, we need to shore up our electrical grid. It's pretty obvious that it's built on older technology and is starting to show signs of deteriorating. Just doing this will help with the grid's reliability and create a lot of jobs in the short term.

Second, we need to do what Obama has been talking about for a while, and that's build the projects which will generate energy from alternative sources. However, this requires careful planning, so that the right projects are built in the places in which they will be the most beneficial.

Ultimately, this will produce more jobs and put America at the forefront of the Energy 2.0 evolution.