In my last post I ended with a short series of ideas for creating sustainable community. The first was to work on localizing your local energy systems. When you look at national and regional electrical grid systems with real scrutiny it becomes alarming just how fickle they have become. More and more people are experiencing rolling blackouts regardless of whether power lines are buried or still strung up on poles. Then during severe weather periods blackouts are becoming the norm, especially when power lines are on poles. Securing your electrical power is one of the number one things to consider. The second being food systems (next post).
These are the two major things that Rob Hopkins (e.g., The Transition Handbook, 2014) proposes for any area considering the need to become a transition community. During my research travels I have seen many transition communities, and there are different sources of power that take advantage of local conditions and opportunities. For instance, In Cloughjordan ecovillage, Eire, the village utilizes waste wood from a local sawmill as pellets in a community furnace to pipe hot water to homes in the ecovillage. They recently diversified more and added solar panels as part of moving away from the grid. Despite the rabid fear pushed by the mainstream media, we still have some time to transition so that localization doesn’t have to happen all at once.
in Scotland where the wind is more reliable a community on one of the Inner Hebrides financed their own wind-generator (away from the grid). Findhorn ecovillage built three wind generators with the potential to power the whole area (Findhorn has also invested a lot in solar). I have read about isolated Scottish and Scandinavian villages in areas of consistent rain, where mini-hydro-power generator systems have been placed in local rivers and even streams. No need to build a dam that powers hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses. Mini-hydro can be scaled down to a single home where a flow of water off any stream can be used to run the generator before the water runs back into the stream, or a series of mini-generators can be placed in convenient places within the stream flow.
Wave power generators have been used by some coastal villages that have installed small scale wave-power electrical generators that power the whole village. These generators can be installed as modular units as demand rises. The key with more renewable forms of electrical generation is to have a diverse portfolio of options and not become trapped with one source. And as I have said in the last three posts, there is no perfect option. It is a juggling act between what is most appropriate for the local area, what are the generation equipment capture costs (economically and ecologically) and the waste costs, while generating the ‘green energy’ during the utility phase?
As the UK found out this unusually hot and ‘calm’ summer, when the wind wasn’t blowing as predictably as it should have been doing, alternative traditional forms of electrical generation for national need were needed. I find it interesting that using the UK as a model (also seen around the world) of how economics and fear are being used to push up energy prices, that the need for local control of energy becomes more logical and essential.
As we begin to consider the localized options that are appropriate for every area and where we live, we have to be innovative and think long-term. Besides thinking of community-wide localization, I would take it a step further than just making your local area its own grid system, but to also encourage every home, apartment complex, and business also become its own electrical producer as part of the local grid. So, how would that work? It could require a combination of investment from the local government. New homes could be required to include multiple forms of current renewable energy. The roofs would be solar paneled or solar shingles used on the roof’s sunlit sides. Next mini-wind generators could be located on the roof top or somewhere convenient on the property. Then the garden (open) areas would be optimum for a geothermal heating and cooling system.
Geothermal is a little considered option but has amazing potential. I visited the Leopold Center near Barraboo, Wisconsin, and was fascinated by the innovative design that can be applied to any building or home. It was the first building in the USA to be certified as ‘carbon neutral.’ This means its annual operations produce no net gain in carbon dioxide emissions, and as importantly, it is a net zero energy building that produces all its own energy needs and exports excess energy out to the local grid. What also intrigued me was the geothermal system that heats and cools the building. From the website, “The center uses a geothermal energy system for heating, cooling, and ventilating. Compared to the extremes in air temperature that occur during a typical Wisconsin year, underground temperatures remain relatively stable. Geothermal systems take advantage of this, extracting heat from the ground in winter and using it to dissipate heat in summer.” The interesting aspect of the geothermal system was that despite the major intrusion into the ground to situate the pipes, you could not see any evidence of it on the surface. A heat pump is usually used to work with the heat differential between the surface and the constant underground temperature. What makes a geothermal heat pump more effective than a conventional heating-cooling system is that it doesn’t burn any fuel. It moves ‘existing’ heat from one place to another. Underground the temperature is a relatively constant 50F (10C) and pipes within this zone can be used to heat or cool a building using the heat different between the outside air and the underground system. Of course, the heat pump(s) runs on electricity so it would be a complemental part of whole system. The geothermal coils for a single home versus and whole apartment block would simply be scaled up to match the need and the area in which it is being installed.
I may talk about the details of such community level systems in more depth in future blog posts. But for now, my aim for this post was to outline the many options that communities can implement now without breaking the bank. As we are seeing in the UK and elsewhere, grid energy costs are rising fast and fossil fuel energy sources are becoming politically weapons. Investing in alternate localized renewable options makes more sense than trying to figure out how to obtain fossil fuel resources in the future, and to pay for them in the looming energy wars that are increasingly more linked to political ones. Localizing energy is therefore a step in preventing violence for acquisition of energy sources. This is also what makes renewables more attractive, because once the energy generation equipment is built and installed the energy is free and local (i.e., wind, sun, water, geothermal heat under your feet, waves crashing against your local shoreline). The energy is there; you just have to get a system in place to capture it. And once you do, your community is free of the tyranny of big corporate systems that control your current electrical grid systems where the energy has to come from somewhere else.
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