Knoxville, you now know what it feels like to be my girlfriend. I promise you something, and the delivery is just a touch late. Not so much that the pizza is cold, but the pepperonis aren’t exactly melting the cheese anymore. I apologize. Hopefully you have some patience so that our relationship can continue striding forward, marching through, skipping hand in hand we can make it. Let’s go Knoxville, let’s pull off a “Notebook” wrapped with “Love Actually” and dabbed into a bit of “Fight Club” type of relationship. I just said let’s kick some ass in the name of love. I’m ready to answer the Beatles who said “You say you want a Revolution/well ya know we’d all want to change the world/You say you’ve got a real solution/well ya know… we’d all love to see the plan."
For me to say I have always been an environmentalist would be like saying I have always been a blogger (Although thanks to a genius, I became part of a blog this summer. I have been aware of what was going on, I just haven’t been actively doing something about it, until now.
It’s difficult to define environmental concerns. You have local concerns (polluted streams, litter on the side of the road, hazardous waste, erosion, smog), you have global concerns (clean air, clean drinking water, wildlife concerns, global warming – 97% of climatologists agree global
warming are caused by human activities, unlike politicians, it is their job to research the issue)
and you have national concerns (mostly economic, energy supply, energy cost). And someone how they all mesh into this umbrella called environmental concerns that we can either hug (pun intended) - or we can say, “I only care about umbrellas (environmental concerns) when it rains (affects me).
Taking a quick look at history we can see how primary energy supplies have evolved from wood to coal to oil. We moved from wood because we burned all of western Europe’s forests (those rolling Irish hills weren’t always green…), we moved from coal because of air quality issues, and
oil is running out (not to mention wars?). I would now like to officially remove oil from our discussion, since it is mainly for automobiles (impacts global warming), although actions of oil companies are crucial to follow and we will return to this later (i.e. BP, Shell). But I want to talk about electricity production. The question is what is next? That answer is our solution. Our generation gets to stand the shoulders of decades of environmentalists and be labeled “the Green generation.” We get to answer the Beatles.
Let me first discuss the problems with using coal as a main energy supply. While, TVA has led the Southeast in cleaning up coal plants by installing scrubbers to reduce S0x and N0x (billions of dollars by the way), there is no way to completely clean up coal plants. There is a myth of clean coal. There is no such thing as clean coal. Asthma, lung disease, acid rain, global warming, mercury poisoning, are just the tip of the iceberg. I want to say – there is nothing sustainable about burning material that took millions of years to create. It is disrupting a natural ecological cycle, and it is in this disruption we see long-term consequences. There is also a tiny problem with mountain top removal. I could write an entire blog about this, but I think this video is suffice.
So who cares? Why should I care? It isn’t my mountains. What about your air quality, while it has improved, the years of coal deposition has taken time to build up, giving our area higher cancer rates, and asthma rates, than we had 30 years ago. It is kind of like how it has
taken our climate a while to adjust to the outpouring of C02. Just real quickly… global warming is more than just “oh, so I get to wear short sleeves longer in the year.”
Fact – sea levels are rising. If they rise as much as many scientists expect them too (once again, they do this for a living, not just reading it for some committee) then we are looking at upwards of 1 billion people being displaced from coastal regions. You think population growth has been unprecedented in the past? Try adding 1 billion people to a smaller land mass, see how high property values go then, see how high food prices go up, say good bye to that big back yard. It affects everyone. Then we have more people occupying more land, how do we produce
more food? Do we keep adding fertilizer, etc., burning up the soils? Well… the soils may already be getting “burned up.” Fact - Heat drives our weather cycle. We may have more
rain, more intense storms, because of the increased uplift of air, however, it will also dry up
faster because of the increased temperatures. Processes become accelerated. Let’s include THAT in the economic analysis. I once heard a representative from the Bush administration say, “Agriculture is only 20% of the economy.” Ladies and gentleman, if you believe measuring the importance of food supply by dollar amount is the way to do it, you’re an idiot. The best indicator of where our economy is going is agriculture. We first, and foremost, need food. Imagine if the price of food skyrocketed, do you not think the price of everything else would increase? Everyone suffers.
Anyways, so yes, we need to move away from fossil fuels. I hope I was preaching to the choir on that.
Now let’s take a deep breath of fresh air (pun absolutely intended) and let’s talk about renewable
energies – defined as wind , solar , geothermal, wave , and tidal . The single greatest attribute for renewable technologies is that they do not disrupt the natural balance of the ecosystem - they embrace it. (In other words, the sun shines everyday, the wind blows everyday, waves crash, and the earth stays warm... coal, oil, and natural gas don’t EXACTLY do that… maybe only a couple million years off). We
can rest assure these technologies are not creating some horrible ecosystem imbalance.
Now, the second thing that is important to realize is that each technology is not available everywhere. For instance, in Tennessee we would probably not use geothermal, wave, or
tidal power. I don’t think we have active volcanoes in Tennessee, and I haven’t found a beach – but let me know if you find one, I do have a surfboard in my room (its true). This leaves wind and solar energy.
But you have to make sure you still have an adequate regime for the technology. The wind doesn’t blow enough in Knoxville for current technology to support a wind turbine, but the sun shines enough (90% of Tennessee can use solar energy very effectively, the other 10% would be perfect for wind energy). Renewable energy is about meshing with your environment, and generating electricity needs through sustainable practice. I would also like to point out that each of these technologies have free fuel, meaning that you don’t have to pay (or the government doesn’t have to subsidize) the cost of fuel and the disposal of waste.
World wide, solar and wind are the fasted of the two growing technologies. Solar technologies are often located on individual rooftops of businesses, schools, and homes while wind turbines are often created into utility-scale projects, but can also be applied to businesses, schools, and homes. Solar has been widely accepted by the public, so much, that demand outstripped supply last year. It is almost unprecedented that any business is set up so that supply outstrips demand. In Tennessee there are many incentives for homeowners, and especially businesses, to put solar
PV panels on rooftops making them very affordable. Plus think of it this way, you add certain things to your home, like a paved driveway for instance. Now, I’m sure that driveway pays for itself over a lifetime… Even so, a renewable energy system reduces the amount of energy your home produces, or your home runs without using electricity, it literally saves you money over its entire lives (have I mentioned the original PV panels on the NASA spaceships still produce electricity, that is ancient technology working 40 years later!). Oh yeah, and if you were buying a house, isn’t energy use one of the things you look at… (equity…)
Wind technologies are a little more prone to skepticism. They have had their growing pains, but like any other energy supply, they have learned how to overcome these issues. With utility-scale wind technologies they must be sited where there are no endangered speicies, no migratory bird paths, and in high wind regimes (in Tennessee, along the ridges of the Cumberland Plateau and Appalachian Mountains.) These issues are all studied before any wind turbine project goes up. The bird lesson was learned in Altamont Pass, CA. Modern wind farms kill less birds per wind turbine than an average house cat, and certainly less than a cell phone tower . Wind turbines operate around 33% efficiency (i.e., the wind blows at the rated speed that percent of the time) and this is the same percent as Nuclear Power, and just about 20% below coal plants. A new study just came out showing that we could put wind turbines off of the Mid-Atlantic coastthat could provide power to cities such
as NYC, Washington D.C., Miami, Boston, Baltimore, Atlantic City, (take your pick of East Coast cities). It is important to realize that we need to spread renewable technologies out, to ensure that if the wind decides not to blow in one place, it is blowing in another place (critics will argue against windfarms saying ‘if you put all the turbines in one place’ I’m saying don’t ? ). If you want to see a wind farm, go to Oliver Springs, TN (literally a 45 minute drive) and I promise… you will not be disappointed.
With this said, renewable energies must be combined with energy efficiency. Energy efficiency is
something you will here about in the upcoming years. TVA is going to have to raise their electricity rates, Congress has ordered them to get out of debt. So, you are going to
hear these practices become more and more practical. I have already mentioned this
guidebook, it is a great place to start.
It will take time for the United States to build itself into a nation that can rely on renewable energy for its energy supply. Transmission lines must be upgraded, and extended to accommodate energy rich regions. Infrastructure must be put in place, to bring down the cost of the supplies of renewable energies. Legislation must be passed (like a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) – if you hear of Carbon Tax, know that it is favoring Nuclear Technology, of which we have not solved security or waste issues). When a national RPS passes, you will hear complaints of “here is how much it will cost to get to 20% by 2020. The hardest step to 20% is getting the first 2%. But, if we demand it, if we take a stand, we will get this technology. The infrastructure is still being set in place, but it is coming. It has to come.
Several companies have made large contributions towards making the United
States sustainable. BP invested $4 billion in
Clipper Wind turbineslast year (A US turbine manufacturer), BP also made several large solar investments. Shell (www.shellwind.com) has invested millions into wind and solar projects as well. Sharp’s leading product is
solar panels.
General Electric creates many of the wind turbines used today, and even though they may be sitting on their 1.5 MW design in order to make money, it is still important that they are contributing. These multinationals realize there is money to be made in the alternative field, do you think that might be an indication…
And for all the assholes in Washington, DC who are going to bitch about “jobs
lost” for coal miners, let me tell you something, coal miners lose jobs when coal companies are able to replace 20 miners with 1 large machine and dynamite (mountain top removal), that’s jobs lost. And for those miners looking for a job, why don’t you try out the renewable energy field? Studies show that switching to renewable sources would create 5 times as many jobs as relying on fossil fuels.
Knoxville, don’t gamble on your future, don’t be fooled. Don’t listen when they say “If we used only energy efficiency” or “if we used only wind” or “if we used only solar”. We aren’t going to use just wind, we aren’t going to use just solar, and we aren’t going to use just efficiency. They need to be all combined. We will not be replacing fossil fuel use immediately, but we will
be reducing it drastically.
Nuclear energy experts don’t believe that the energy will be ready for another 10 years, and even then, they aren’t sure how to store the waste. This is a waste that takes 1000 years just to halfway decompose, that’s a SERIOUS issue. Nuclear industry representatives have a
goal of maintaining the current percent of electricity generation. In the Southeast, we must fight to make sure this doesn’t increase. Don’t get me wrong, we will have to maintain a diversity of coal, nuclear, but we need to increase renewables. Coal will be reducing its share of the market,
renewables increasing, and nuclear maintaining the same, and efficiency will also eat a huge chunk.
Just keep your eyes open Knoxville, let’s use what we can, our economy will
improve, our environment will improve, and our lives will improve. I’ll talk to you ramblers tomorrow, if you have questions, leave them in a comment, I’ll personally email you back. Thanks for stopping by.
