RESEARCH PROVES NEW ENERGY: GO SMALL, GREEN & LOCAL

Today’s posts illuminate an emerging pattern of serious infighting between old energy suppliers (Big Coal and Nuclear today and Big Oil most days) and New Energy advocates like Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and Nevada Senator Harry Reid. So, at the top of the page is the scientific finding: New Energy is the winning choice.

Best Energy Strategy: Small, Green and Local, Experts Say
September 20, 2007 (Springer via Science Daily)

WHO
Benjamin Sovacool, Science/Technology researcher,Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

In centralized generation, power flows from the plant to the end user. Disruption at the plant or anywhere along the line leaves end users powerless. (click to enlarge)

WHAT
Sovacool’s new study finds the best energy strategy for emerging world circumstances is not large-scale, centralized generation but distributed generation from renewable sources.

WHEN
Published in the current issue of the journal Policy Sciences.

WHERE
Sovacool’s findings apply to the US and other western industrial and post-industrial societies.

WHY
- Sovacool cites power supply interruptions from natural and manmade disasters, climate change and pollution from emissions and rising costs to consumers for electricity and transportation fuels as the basis for looking anew at renewable and alternative energy sources.
- Sovacool uses 5 criteria to evaluate energy sources: (1) technical feasibility, (2)cost, (3) negative externalities (i.e., human health and environmental impacts), (4) reliability, (5) security. He concludes there are 3 strategies that best fit these criteria: (1) energy efficiencies, (2) renewable energies like wind, solar and hydro, (3) distributed generation.

With distributed power generation, multiple sources of energy coming into the grid can be managed at a central hub, reducing the potential for complete power disruption. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- article: “According to Benjamin Sovacool…these alternative technologies are simultaneously feasible, affordable, environmentally friendly, reliable and secure.”
- Sovacool: “…it is these miniature generators – not mammoth and capital-intensive nuclear and fossil fuel plants – that offer the best strategy for diversifying electrical generation in a competitive energy environment.”