Renewing Our Energy
By ANN PINCA
This week, the Department of Energy (DOE) approved the Cameron LNG facility in Hackberry, Louisiana, owned by Sempra Energy. Cameron LNG is the sixth license approved on the long list of DOE applications to export American natural gas to better-paying markets abroad. Louisiana is already home to the first approved LNG export plant, Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass, currently under construction with an anticipated final price tag of $12 billion dollars.
Twelve billion dollars! How short-sighted and absurd it seems to spend all those dollars to export a finite American resource. If nothing else about the multiple issues swirling around the oil and gas industry resonates with citizens, the fact that so much capital, including government subsidies, is directed to an inevitably dead-end resource should cause alarm. What could the United States achieve with $12 billion industry dollars invested in renewable energy instead?
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Part of the biomass heating plant at Hughesville High School in Lycoming County.
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Yet in spite of its well-advertised and well-funded oil and gas cousin, renewable energy has managed to grow. According to an EcoWatch article by Jay Warmke last April, wind energy capacity has grown 960 percent in the last 10 years, while solar generating capacity has increased 1,200 percent in just five years. Declining installation prices for both commercial wind turbines and photovoltaic (PV) systems have contributed to that growth and should continue to do so.
But exciting as those numbers sound, the overall energy generation from wind and solar represented only a tiny two percent of the total energy consumed by Americans in 2011, with hydro-electric power, biomass, and geothermal adding another nine percent. In spite of the promising growth of renewable energy, the United States obviously has a long way to go to meet its energy needs through renewable sources.
Americans use 20 percent of the world's annual energy output, but account for only 4.5 percent of the world's population, according to an article in the Post Carbon Institute's book, Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth. The truth is, Americans waste a lot of energy because it has always been cheap. But now, as the consequences of our energy needs are more keenly seen and felt in resource extractions like hydraulic fracturing, mountaintop coal removal, and even sprawling wind farms, we need to increase our "energy literacy."
Most people, myself included, probably never gave much thought to where the power came from when flipping a light switch, turning on the television, or taking a Sunday drive. Now we know all too well that every watt of electricity or ounce of gasoline comes with an environmental or social justice price tag, and the price keeps going up. Eventually, if not even now, we will not want to pay that price. So what can we do?
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Shrub willow grown on the East Lycoming School District property will be harvested on a three-year rotation to provide fuel for the biomass heating plant.
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Two ideas presented by the Post Carbon Institute are energy conservation and distributed renewable generation. Energy conservation, simply using less energy and/or increasing energy efficiency, is a good start. As the book says, "Conservation helps us appreciate the energy we use," and points out that we have slipped into using and doing things with energy that we could easily do with our own muscle power--think leaf blowers instead of rakes.
With distributed renewable generation, energy production is shifted from large power plants and long-distance transmission lines to individual or community-based generation. Think roof-top solar panels, small biomass facilities, or small wind turbines. A locally-based energy distribution system will increase property values, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, make communities less vulnerable to power outages, and preserve ecosystems.
It's time to realize that new approaches are needed, that huge investments in fossil fuels make little sense because they ultimately have no future. A whole new world of energy is already growing, with new innovations like bladeless vertical windmills and algae-powered street lights already underway. It's time to invest in the future, not in the past. EcoWatch's Warmke proposes that the fossil fuel industry can only compete with renewable energy because of the government subsidies still granted to an industry that is "long-established, wealthy and well connected."
In the Post Carbon Institute's energy book, SUNY Cortland Economics Professor Lisi Krall supports that idea, suggesting that fossil fuels are still pursued because "the vested interests find this the best course for business--but it is clearly not the best course for society." Krall continues with this thought: "In the final chapter of our use of fossil fuels we will commit ourselves to the messiest, dirtiest, most socially and economically disruptive transition we can possibly muster unless we are willing to change course."
It is beyond time to change our course. American ingenuity has already proven that we can build better, live more energy efficiently, and create energy through sustainable, renewable sources; we just need the political will to do it. By reducing our energy demands and embracing renewable energy generation, Americans can truly renew our energy for the future.
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A solar field installed at East Lycoming School District in Hughesville, Pa. In
addition to substantially reducing its carbon footprint, the school district anticipates $98,000 savings in annual operational costs through its biomass and solar installments, with $96,000 revenue generation from the solar field.
All images in this article by ANN PINCA
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