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RE: Is "Green" Tom Friedman the new eco-Orwell of Solartopia?
by Christopher Swan
April 21, 2007

Harvey Wasserman's piece is excellent.

Friedman is, as usual, speaking the issue of the day not necessarily his knowledge or experience. He's repeating the same unexamined, ignorant and largely corrupt notion of our energy future. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

Mass media has consistently and thoroughly ignored the rise of everything from organic farming to solar energy to new railways to eco-restoration to dozens of other trends that have occurred in the last 35 or so years, trends blithely dismissed as "new age" or "hippy dippy" or whatever. That's what they had to do because they can't handle the truth of it all. These new things don't fit the old paradigm so they are rejected, as are their proponents. It's not just a commercial denial, but a denial of the substantive change that many people know is happening, but don't want to face. Half this society is skidding along with it's heels dug in as it heads for the cliff, while the other half has already jumped off.

There is reason to be concerned on the commercial front however, as efficiency means big cuts in big industries. For example, one railcar (64 passenger coach) would replace the equivalent of 395 automobiles in use in one year, or 1,900 in its lifetime. If railways took 25% of all auto traffic in US, a reasonable market share, it would take about 260,000 coaches, replacing 97 million cars. In the lifetime of the coaches, about 50 years, some 490 million cars would not be made.

The reality is photovoltaics are about to take center stage. I've been watching and writing about the industry for three decades and the innovations I see now, some I can't explain and others I'm not supposed to know about, are astonishing. Wind and other renewable sources are wonderful, and will prosper, but PVs are going to sweep the world. Cost and efficiency will simply not be an issue. As I'd imagined years ago it will be building materials and it will be developed with lightning speed. Several innovations now within one to four years to market and/or proof of concept, suggest cheap PVs at 18 to 24% efficiencies at about $.09 to $.12 per KwH, and soon thereafter 50% efficient cells at equally low prices due to the material and tiny quantities used. Even at coal electric prices at $.03 to $.05 it won't matter. There will be a giant sucking sound as capital withdraws from fossil fuels.

Nukes, coal, natural gas, oil and big dams. These things are over. The very idea of centralized power plants is over, as well as long distance transmission lines and perhaps large chunks of the grid as well (maybe centralized government too). The meaning of renewable energy has been focused on environmental values. What has been missed is its political and cultural value, and its stunning efficiency as a system. If I can put a new roof on my house and generate ample power in a film thinner than paint, and do so only 15 feet from my desk, and store the power indefinitely, and do this at virtually any scale, then what the bleep do I need all that other shit for? The city or the building doesn't need a power plant it is the power plant.

Consider the lot of CEOs of companies like GE. Do they bet on energy systems that can be sold to any person, any government, any company, anywhere in the world right now, have no particular environmental impacts whatsoever, entail no political uncertainties, can be built and maintained locally, can be scaled up in production, can be used at tiny and huge scales, and are popular right now, or does he bet on something that can only be sold to governments and big companies, has horrific potential impacts, involves all sorts of political uncertainties, requires a priesthood of maintainers, requires a massive start-up investment, is viable only at larger scales and isn't popular at all? GE is into windmills.

In short, the smart money is not going into coal or nukes. Nor will it. The decision has already been made. When companies like Swiss Re have $100 mm positions in new PV companies that's real money, in terms of dollars and influence.

Onward,
Christopher Swan

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