Timothy – Thank you for your responses. I agree, the best path forward for a movement capable of transformations is back to basics. And spot on in your point on the success of SoS. My post made something of a case for a different strategy because we need to base our big picture goals on the realities of our institutions, etc. A point I should have made more strongly is that while I stand by the need for such radical departures in long term thinking, we don’t need to drop everything we’re doing and start something new, we need to recontextualize our actions into a transformative framework.

The devil is in the details with renewables and smart grids, and using an overly simple model does not allow you to make robust conclusions. The fact that they chose to ignore something doesn’t make their result any better than if they’d simply forgotten to include it.

Other people have made more realistic models. David MacKay has published his model in Sustainable Energy – without the hot air (free ebook there if you want it). His model considers the space, efficiency, and physical limits of deploying renewable energy in the UK. Conclusion, it’s not feasible.

Barry Brook and others over at bravenewclimate.com have done much more realistic studies. They consider intermittency and storage systems, and various forms of backup. They also consider the cost of the materials, the rate of deployment, and all the other things that are traditionally ignored when people talk about renewables.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to renewable energy. I just don’t think it can do the job. The reason I think that is simple. I’ve seen lots of calculations, some say it can do it, some say it can’t. The most realistic calculations are unanimous, renewables cannot power a big nation.

For Tony Wildish and rmarg: It is precisely because renewable energies are not controllable that we need a smart grid. The ILSR folks do not include intermmittancy or interconnectability in their study because it is not the purpose of their study. They also do not suggest that ONLY wind and sun should be used – the full scope of renewable energy and efficiency opportunities is far greater, more complex, and more locally customized (which further back up my central arguments) – they are simply saying that JUST a few technologies gets us so far towards a vision of energy that is currently being dismissed as impossible. There are things that they do not address. That does not mean that there are no solutions for these obstacles. Real-time Demand Side Management, which could become a major revenue generator for ordinary people like us, can make a huge difference by modulating when energy is used to match intermittency (this also gets away from the “baseload” concept. So can smart grid storage systems that are in the works (there some cool ideas about backing up the grid using plug-in electric car batteries, as well as air compression storage, water pumping, and hydrogen, I’m skeptical of the latter). Also, the argument is not for zero interconnection between regions – that is essential for back-up, but rather about maximizing the back-up of various sources with each other and synergizing them in a relational manner. These are not all the alternatives, so saying that JUST the things I have mentioned will not save us is accurate, but not a counterpoint to the underlying argument. In fact, part of what I am pointing to is the assumption of single solutions characteristic of our current energy system (a control based model) is less relevant than a multi-faceted, relational energy network model. More importantly, as I argued, the alternative (mass centralized energy) is not a viable solution as I have demonstrated, and it is further deeply unjust and causing all sorts of problems.

For Andrew:
I think communities can and must interconnect in very real ways, not just in idea sharing. I think some of these flows should be financial (especially around creating economies of scale for production, distribution, and marketing of clean economy production). I think it is more than that though. As movement leaders, we should think like entrepreneurs about all of our resource flows – money, ideas, skills, people, natural capital, social networks, and political will. I’m very excited about cooperatives for that purpose, and not the “mom and pop” cooperatives that others might dismiss, cooperatives that truly cooperate across space and diversity.

Eg. what if all around the country we started efficiency cooperatives that started using the efficiency and weatherization expertise that is bubbling up out of the stimulus and the innovative business models like the one’s I’ve mentioned, and started organizing neighborhoods as owners and producers of the clean energy future (I’ve started doing this locally). What if we linked these efforts with members in Appalachia in the alternative economies work you are doing, and found ways to share the stories of folks fighting MTR with neighbors who are part of cooperative efficiency organizing. We could (hypothetically) develop groundswell among the rural electrical cooperatives (currently staunch advocates of dirty energy and opponents of top-down climate and clean energy regulation) to support community-based economy models. We could (hypothetically) coordinate strategically to shift where these rural cooperatives are politically while advancing the media message backed up by real hard proof that there’s a better way than coal. And we could (hypothetically) do this as a part of a coordinated campaign with teams opposing MTR. Hypothetically, we could pool members resources to invest in community projects (there are a remarkable number of groups I’ve worked with where the wealthier individuals want to cooperatively invest with poorer folks to make the whole neighborhood more efficient, and I can imagine the same with regional economic development). Simultaneously, we could shift the political landscape by getting some of the actors currently supporting coal industries which blow up Appalachian mountains, but who also have innate interests in community-based energy, to support the clean energy revolution because it’s in their own economic best interest.

I’ve mapped out this imaginary scenario in a binary, so of course it ignores the folks in Michigan trying to retool the auto industry, and the Navajo green jobs initiative on the reservations, and urban renewal models like they’re doing in the South Bronx, and …

Where I’m going with this is:

1. I entirely agree with you that we need to be using the green economy to make concrete improvements in people’s lives not in the “let’s help you” way but in the “let’s work together” way, and in doing so, build new social, economic, and political power and shift the existing alignment of power.

2. If you’re initial response to my hypothetical (which is an intentionally poorly hidden invitation) scenario was “there’s no way we could centrally coordinate all that!” my response would be, Exactly. That’s why we need a network model for a movement instead of a control-based model. This means institutionalizing thinking like a network. Ie, I don’t have to know everything that’s out there, I know a piece and I will act in a way that creates opportunities to adopt, adapt, and riff off of what I am doing, instead of simply trying to get my piece done. And we both keep throwing it out to the universe and listening to what else is being thrown out by others and create synergy where we see potential. There’s also a need for synthesis and capacity-building entities (like the Summer of Solutions) that actively interconnect, build power, and train leaders in that network model. Increasingly, this network will become intentional about how it targets different actors, amplifies different changes, and directly and practically connects. It also means sharing and spreading awareness of network strategy, and if that changes movement response to cap and trade and clean energy standards, and small business incentives, and who is really going to create jobs, that’s progress. Just understanding and committing to a network strategy, for energy and for our movement shifts our conception of power and reorients what we are fighting for. So we should spread that.

3. To draw from my own experience, the Summer of Solutions would never be able to grow as vibrantly or as powerfully as we have if we simply recruited people to do “our stuff”. We ask people who are already doing amazing stuff to do their amazing stuff through our infrastructure, and create additional structure, resources, tools, and insights to be even more amazing. And there’s freedom to define their course, space for people with entrepreneurial ideas to expand them by implementing with new partners, and start to build the momentum needed to attract bigger resources. The networks of youth activists, that are even starting to link the community leaders, green businesses, and other non-youth nationally, are more than just idea sharing. They are coordinating and amplifying a message, and slowly organizing a far vaster network of resources that sooner or later can be integrated, synergized, and deployed.

4. I think (in addition to building the movement through concrete on the ground improvements) this also answers the urgency trap issue. We CANNOT move fast enough or big enough by trying to mobilize big, fast, and loud in a centralized way. It is not big enough, fast enough, or loud enough. We will be the best at sweeping and rapid change if we take the time on the fundamentals in order to sustain exponential, inexorable, and self-sustaining. If this strategy sounds ludicrous, keep in mind that it was the basis of Obama’s landmark 2008 campaign (whatever you think of his evolution as a president since): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zack-exley/the-new-organizers-part-1_b_132782.html

When as fast as you can go is not fast enough, it means you need more people in the game. This means going deep, and empowering people to create while training them to work together.

This is still abstract, but hopefully it suggests some direct options

You identified the need for networking our solution communities. As you know, I’m working on facilitating economic solutions in extraction dominated communities in Appalachia. Do you think there are ways to network beyond the sharing of ideas? For instance, economic transactions between solution communities on a regional or national scale to begin creating a self-reinforcing alternative economy? We would need to structure such transactions in a way that they bring more communities into such a network, and doesn’t become a networked isolationism.

As you recognized, our movement does have a deadline for climate change, but we don’t know when it is. How do we reconcile the work of long term transformation with the need to mitigate the damage being done today? And how do we do it without falling into an urgency trap? I think my post said something along the lines of “As a movement, we must adopt tactics that directly halt destruction of the biosphere and create momentum towards reshaping the flow of power in society,” but even that is still a general statement which gives the impression of being a resolution, but is just a restatement of the problem. I think you are right on when it comes to our long term strategy, but I’m still hung up on the necessary changes in the near term.

Thanks Timothy!

They state clearly that they do not account for the intermittency of wind or solar power generation. That is a serious oversight. During the recent snowstorm that covered much of the US, neither wind nor solar would have yielded anything useful, yet demand was far higher than normal. A smart-grid wouldn’t have helped, there was nowhere else for the power to come from. Unless our backup sources could supply us for a couple of weeks, we’d be in trouble when that happens.

They then state that natural gas can be used as a backup to provide power when wind or solar are not available, but they do not consider the cost (capital or environmental) of doing so. One report that does analyse such factors in detail is available at http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/. They consider several scenarios, wind with backup-gas is their option-4.

They show that, under realistic conditions, the use of gas backup effectively wipes out the CO2 savings of wind. This is partly because using gas in backup-mode is far less efficient than using gas for baseload. The rapid, variable response that is needed makes a big difference.

It’s important to use realistic models for calculations of how much we can do with renewables, there are a lot of hidden gotchas.

I’m also thrilled at your description of Luntz’s framing proposals. The question is what those proposals look like in practice. Building that popular vision of a healthy, sustainable, just world is going to require more communication tools than we usually use. Those are the examples that I want to read about.