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« Responding to Climate Change
Excerpt from In Search of Environmental Excellence:
Moving Beyond Blame
by Bruce Piasecki and Peter Asmus
CHAPTER 3
A Global Greenhouse: Framing the Debate
Page 11 of 14
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CHANGING PATTERNS IN THE USE OF ENERGY RESOURCES
IN THE UNITED STATES
Source: U.S. Bureau of Census
and Resources for the Future
New York was also one of the first states to recognize that capturing heat produced in industrial processes for reuse as energy was a sensible idea. In doing so, New York and other states proved many old-school planners wrong: developing more centralized energy generation is not always incompatible with the soft energy path of increased efficiency and recycling.21
"Less is more" programs have also been developed on the West Coast. California's adoption of standards for the single largest user of electricity in the home — the refrigerator — forced national manufacturers to create greater efficiencies, which in turn became de facto industry benchmarks. Such refrigerator standards could allow the United States to avoid doubling its nuclear power-plant fleet. California has also been a leader in developing renewable energy supplies, cutting its reliance on fossil-fueled power plants from eighty percent in the midseventies to almost half of that today.
States took the lead in innovative energy programs because of the lack of any high-visibility energy policy being staked out at the White House. The emerging environmental consequences attendant upon future energy choices, however, will command a revival of federal responsibility in the 1990s. A replacement for the petrochemical treadmill cannot be built by states alone.
One federal agency that has played a leadership role in promoting a more efficient use of existing resources is the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which was created in 1937 to provide cheap power throughout the Pacific Northwest by marketing the tremendous energy potential of the magnificent Columbia River. Thirty different federal dams are part of the system.
A sample accomplishment of the BPA is its promotion of the idea of "least-cost" energy planning. By initiating innovative conservation efforts, such as the investing of $21 million to retrofit more than ninety percent of the entire community of Hood River, BPA is breaking new ground. They not only quantify what energy savings can be achieved, but also analyze how their approach can be marketed to other communities across the United States.
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Footnotes
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Another emerging trend is the notion of "hard solar," whereby huge photovoltaic farms would be stationed in the Southwest to generate electricity for different parts of the nation. The problem with solar energy has always been finding enough insolation in enough parts of the country to enable widespread applications, and the ability to store the energy, once it has been created, for use when the sun is down. However, when the energy produced by photovoltaics is converted into liquid hydrogen fuel, it could theoretically be stored and transported to less sunny parts of the country for use. With certain policy changes, researchers such as Robert Williams of Princeton predict, such technological breakthroughs could occur as early as the beginning of the next century.
It is projected that thirty to forty percent of New Mexico would need to be utilized in order to displace current fossil-fuel consumption. From an international perspective, it would take 1.7 percent of the land mass of our deserts, or 3.6 percent of the world's agricultural land, to displace world fossil-fuel use. [« back]
