A Brief Overview Of Where We Are
We need to adapt to climate change, right? And if we hope to adapt, wouldn’t it be nice to know where we are coming from? Let’s briefly review a few of the basics of energy in our daily lives. I have laid out three main points of the energy system we have today, as well as three exciting expansions of those ideas.
First: The system is generally functional. Consider the flip of a light switch, the heating of an oven, the gasoline in a car. These are exquisitely engineered feats that deserve heaps of gratitude towards the nameless designers and laborers that brought them about. These items and the other common mechanisms of our energy system hint at the energy generation and transmission that is underneath it all, but despite our feelings about the system, the reliability, especially in the PNW is remarkable.
AND: Energy is everything. We're made of electrons. Everything we know is also made of electrons. You're also using the power of electrons to illuminate the screen that you're reading this text upon. What? Yes, this means that you are energy, too. Why don't we talk about that more often? Down with small talk! Up with electrons!
Second: Energy has been controlled. Speaking specifically about the West's energy history, the availability of energy in the form of fossil fuels has been generally limited to those wealthy enough to extract it. Energy sources such as trees, whale, and coal are not easily attained for long, especially without intentional resource management. Those able to afford the hunt for such heat and light sources were, and are the elites. Those elites are nearly exclusively respondent to market forces, not morals, climate change, or extinction rates. The privatization of energy relies on difficult to source energy, i.e. fossilized carbon critters from eons past buried miles deep in the ocean floor.
AND: That's changing! Renewable energies like solar, wind, and biogas are disrupting the death-grip of the entrenched power structure, and is spreading the availability of energy generation for personal heating and lighting to more people. It is not a perfect fix, but we are now within a new age of energy. The very fact that people can install sufficient electricity production on their homes around the world is truly radical.
Third: Energy networks are complex. Transmission lines and distribution grids, energy dispatch and imbalance markets, inverter-owned utilities and ratepayers. The energy industry is jargon rich. The delivery of energy across miles allows us many to live far away from spinning turbine blades and the potential pollution of the power pushing those blades. We pay the monthly bill for however many kilowatt-hours we consumed, and that's about as close as any of us get to understanding energy consumption. It's purely transactional, intangible, and all on a boring but dreaded piece of paper. How bizarre.
AND: We can do better. Yes, energy is complicated and borderline magical, but the general awareness of our energy systems need not be shrouded in dense jargon. A basic energy education is possible, and necessary, in order to usher in our new energy age as rapidly as possible. When people can feel empowered by their relationship with their energy use and generation, we will see interest grow like never before. By reconsidering our energy networks to not only span entire coastlines, but are also neighborhood scale, we will flatten the learning curve for the betterment of all.