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writings
MICRO SCALE SELF SUFFICIENCY
An opinion survey of 30 countries, including the United States, published
last April found that large majorities of people everywhere view climate
change as a serious problem. Yet in England, for example, fewer than one
percent of the population has switched to a green electric power supplier.
Less than a third of one percent have installed any from of renewable
micro-system, such as solar panels. Highly efficient cars represent a
minuscule 0.2% of British car sales. Most Britons admit not even trying to
use their cars less. And so it goes.
Most of us evidently feel we can’t do anything about such global issues as
the overheating of the planet or energy efficiency. If so, most of us are
wrong. We may not be able to solve “the world’s problems” but we can
certainly do our part.
Consider, for example, that Maine currently has the following
under-utilized energy resources: sunshine (convertible to heat and
electricity); wind and coastal tides (convertible to
electricity); low grade geothermal heat (found in every backyard)
for home heating; organic wastes (sewage, septage, agricultural,
kitchen and forestry wastes, paper and other bio-degradables) convertible to
bio-gas for heating, cooking and power generation. We have the potential to
grow oil-bearing crops, such as rape-seed (canola) that can be
converted to bio-diesel fuel for space heating and motor fuel. We have
potatoes and could grow switch grass and other crops and convert
them to bio-ethylene for vehicular fuel or fuel additive.
All of these resources may be utilized on a small or large scale. The
necessary technology is available. So is the experience of others. Sweden
has developed housing that requires no heating system and household-scale
geothermal heating that can be retrofitted to any house. The Scots and the
Italians have quiet, household-scale wind turbines. India and China have
well-tested small scale biogas digesters; Belgium a multi-town
biogas-from-waste system.
Scotland has just inaugurated a nationwide "Micro-Renewables" program. The
aim is to have every Scottish household participate in meeting national
greenhouse gas reduction quotas under the Kyoto Protocols and in meeting the
goal of 40% of Scotland’s energy derived from renewables by 2020.
Inspired by the Scottish program (which also provides an exemplary,
worked-out model for our planners), we could devise our own
"Self-sufficient Households, Self Sufficient Towns" program to
encourage and facilitate the installation of alternative energy systems in
as many area households as possible; providing mechanisms of integration
with the power grid as appropriate.
Even without such a program, we can, on our own individual initiative,
install a solar water heater that will pay for itself very quickly. With a
photovoltaic array or silent rooftop wind turbine we can generate our own
power and sell the excess to our local utility. Together we can form a
bio-diesel cooperative with oil-crop farmers and produce a large share of
our heating oil in our own local facility. With area towns we can establish
a joint facility to process our bio-degradable wastes into bio-gas (methane)
with fertilizer as the byproduct. Such a facility will run on its own power,
produce cooking gas and/or electric power for sale, sell fertilizer on the
side; and pay for itself through reduced costs of waste disposal by area
transfer stations and landfills. We can also organize similar ventures to
produce ethanol-fuel.
These are but a few ideas that are currently feasible. Implementing some of
them will, in addition to reducing fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas
emissions, also provide significant opportunities for real local economic
development with better paying production-based jobs in area enterprises:
some of the technologies are licensable for manufacturing here.
Contemplating the end of affordable oil and the accompanying economic
disaster may be scary. So are the consequences of global warming. However,
fear and apprehension will get us no further than fearing “terrorism” will.
“Oil, no longer a mere commodity, had become a national
security matter, thereby falling under the purview of the Department of
Defense and warranting protection at any cost, including the use of
military force”, writes Kevin Phillips in his new book, American
Theocracy. The American military “is being used more and more for the
protection of overseas oil fields and the supply routes that connect them to
the United States and its allies. Such endeavors, once largely confined to
the Gulf area, are now being extended to unstable oil regions in other parts
of the world. Slowly but surely, the U.S. military is being converted into a
global oil-protection service”, echoes Michael Klare in his Blood and Oil.
We may keep wringing our hands. Bury our heads in the sands of denial.
Gamble that some miracle or military might will spare us from the
consequences of our inaction — that those things will happen to other
people. We can believe in Armageddons beyond out control and
irresponsible “leaders” offering empty promises, dated
thinking, inefficiency, incompetence, corruption, lack of vision and
patriotic slogans..
Or we can act. To do our best to be prepared is, after all, a matter of
values. Values like stewardship, responsibility, competence, forward
thinking, vision, prudence, caring and ingenuity.
If not now, when?
Paul Kando
Damariscotta |
