Just as the Internet revolutionized communication and commerce, an Energy Internet could transform how we use electricity and enable the integration of renewable energy sources on a large scale.
Thomas Friedman makes this case in his 2008 book, ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America.’ An Energy Internet is one component of his vision to change the way America thinks about — and uses — energy.
He argues that the forces of global warming, global flattening — how technology has leveled the economic playing field — and global population growth are all coverging to create “the most important dynamic shaping the world we live in today.” Friedman says we are now in the “Energy-Climate Era.”
We need to revamp our energy industry and habits, he says, largely because of climate change and national security concerns. The climate is warming and changing some things now, and there’s no guarantee its effects will be incremental and linear in the coming decades. Climate tipping points could lead to catastrophic disruption. We need to realize that and rein in carbon emissions as fast as possible.
Friedman also argues that since we’re trying to change the climate system — a really huge system, we need to take systemic approach. We can’t only just make our cars or coal-burning power plants a bit more efficient. We need overhaul the energy system over the coming decades. This will help us limit the impacts of climate change and reduce our reliance on oil from petrodictators.
We need a green revolution, Friedman says, not a green fad.
The energy challenges also provide an opportunity for America to lead the world in developing a clean, green energy system and to remain among the top economic powers.
At one point, Friedman describes what it would be like to live with the Energy Internet in the year 20 E.C.E. — Energy-Climate Era. For starters, every home would have a Smart Black Box, similar to your cable TV box or digital video recorder. This Smart Black Box would be like a personal energy dashboard; it would control the interoperability of all of your energy, communications and entertainment devices.
The Smart Box could turn all of your electronic appliances and devices on or off — or turn part of them on and off, in order to regulate your energy use. This would also save you money and prevent blackouts. For example, when energy use on a regional grid is high, your Smart Box could turn off the heating element in your dryer or water heater, or turn off your air conditioning or heat — maybe just for a few minutes — until the load on the grid eases. Because electricity prices are higher when demand is higher, you save money by not using as much electricity at those high prices. (Right now, however, utilities charge a flat rate for power, so you don’t have an option to buy more electricity when it is less expensive. That would change.)
In addition, you could control your Smart Box from your cell phone or the Internet, just like the folks in those DirecTV commercials can set their DVRs to record a TV show just by using their cell phone or a computer at work. So, for example, if you were on vacation you could turn off — or turn down — your home’s electricity use, and set it to ramp up when you get home. Or if you’re delayed by a day, tell it to stay powered down until you get home. You don’t need the water heater going if you’re gone for a week, after all.
The Smart Box could also monitor electricity costs and run some of your appliances, like the dishwasher, overnight when costs hit a low-enough level. Plug-in hybrid cars could sell energy back to the grid when necessary; in fact, cars would no longer be called cars — they’d be “Rolling Energy Storage Units.” Most or all of our transportation would run on electricity. Schools could have solar panels on their roofs and sell energy to the grid; the utility could even rent solar panels to you to help it manage supply.
A national system like this could result in much less electricity use, saving us all money. By flattening out the peaks and valleys in electricity demand, it would also allow utilities to bring more renewable energy sources on board, like wind and solar. Also, if utilities can control the peaks in demand, they won’t have to have extra power plants on standby for the few days each summer that air conditioning demand spikes. That saves the utility money and helps the climate.
Sound like a fantasy? Well part of this kind of Energy Internet has been tested in the Pacific Northwest in 2007 and performed well. The smart grid appliance controllers already exist.
Friedman argues that the U.S. needs several things to spur development of the Energy Internet. First, a mandate for utilities to get a sizable amount — say 20 percent — of their power from renewable sources; second, incentives to have utlities help customers use less energy; third, research and development has to increase in the power generation sector. R&D by electric utilities in U.S. in 2007 was 0.15 percent of revenues; in most competitve industries, it is 8-10 percent. We need to invest in the science to to the research and develop a new energy system.
The goal is to eventually power the nation with abundant, clean, reliable and cheap electrons. This could take 30-50 years. In the meantime, just through energy efficiency efforts — for our buildings and appliances — we can soak up all the energy demand for the next two decades (with no extra carbon emissions).
It’s all possible, but we need to support the science and technology research to make it happen.
If you’re concerned — or curious — about global warming, global flattening and global population growth and how they are creating the Energy-Climate Era, then read this book. You’ll learn how we can make the green energy revolution happen.
(Book cover graphic courtesy Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
I won’t be having any “black boxes” in my house. I will use what I wish to and can afford.
Also, the climate is always changing, right now it is getting cooler. I warn against central controls. They never work because the folks in charge are political hires. They do what is fashionable and chic, rather than what makes sense. The free market, unfettered by regulators, is the only possible rational method of distributing goods and services. Attempts to the contrary will be very expensive and won’t function.
Actually, you could control the Smart Black Box and it would enable you to use electricity at lower prices, thus saving you money.
Mr Napier’s comment that he will not be having any black boxes assumes they are not to be a requirement for continuing connection to the grid. Perhaps they will be required and he will then need to choose ideology over co-operation. The arrogance of his comment that he “will use what I wish to and can afford” will be fine if he is disconnected from the grid and allowed to provide his own electricity from solar, wind or falling water.
To continue, “The free market, unfettered by regulators” is exactly what has brought the world wide recession. If that free market were indeed “the only possible rational method of distributing goods and services” then there would be no hope of a recovery.
In fact there is great hope because community minded people all over are quite willing to work together for the common good by conserving energy, paying more for what they do use and generating more energy in small amounts to be aggregated by a smart grid.
I suspect that after a period of being left behind in the dust of a new consciousness that Mr. Napier will in fact join with the rest of us in getting down to the business of energy conservation and improvement of the common good. All are welcome.
Mr. Lundquist, your comments that we need to choose ideology over co-operation belies a social progressive mindset that believes one’s concerns over how technology affects us and how it is to be administered for us should be completely written off in favor of a grand scheme sociopolitical experiment. Your gibberish about “The free market, unfettered by regulators” bringing worldwide recession is absurd. Just who do you propose the regulators should be? The government? The UN? George Soros and his ilk? You?
Distribution of goods and services, community minded, work for the common good, and being left in the dust of the new consciousness? You left out the part about “resistance is futile… you will be assimilated into the Borg!” People like you are the reason why Benjamin and I feel compelled to ask what are you thinking?
If it comes down to choosing ideology or living in your misguided utopist world, I’ll choose ideology, live a more simple life, and deal with the dust thank you.
You guys should read Friedman’s book. I didn’t cover all of it in my post; he also describes the economic and global political ramifications of a more hot, flat and crowded world. One of his arguments is that clean, renewable energy and energy efficiency are going to be the biggest growth industries of this century. He sees it as a chance for America to lead in these industries, which will make our economy more efficient, reduce pollution, help stabilize the climate, and help meet the global demend for more energy.
He also believes in the free market and wants as many people as possible working on innovations in energy efficiency and in generating clean, reliable, abundant electrons. But he argues that in order to create a vibrant market, in order to get 10,000 people and companies working on these problems, we need to create the conditions to allow it to happen. The coal-powered electricity generation industry has a 100-year head start. It also gets lots of subsidies and tax breaks, so its market is not truly “free” to begin with. Friedman says let’s create the initial conditions, the garden plot where an ecosystem of clean-energy innovation can grow (like setting a national renewable energy requirement of 20 percent by some date). Then let the free maket work and those 10,000 individuals and companies will come up with the advances in energy efficiency and clean power — and create American jobs.
If we don’t do this and continue business as usual, we’ll stay behind in these industries and we’ll be buying our energy efficient equipment and clean power equipment from Japan, China and Germany, and they’ll get the jobs.
Read the book. He quotes a lot of corporate executives, such as GE’s Jeffrey Immelt, who share these views. They want certainty in the clean power market so they can commit money and people to develop the stuff.
Dan Kulpinski,
You make some very excellent and valid points. I personally believe the emerging renewable energy industry will be a huge source of economic growth to our country. I don’t see subsidies as counter to free market concepts. They are incentives to build industry that requires an inherent high capital outlay to reach productivity.
We need to develop clean renewable power and reduce our dependence on foreign energy. That will bring dollars back into our economy and create many jobs. To build our own energy industry we need to seed its startup. That makes perfect economic sense. However, once seeded and brought to a point of productivity we need to let free market and the entrepreneur spirit arise and take it to the mega industry it is to become.
I likewise agree with you that we can’t keep doing the same wrong things and expect a different outcome. But the wrong thing wasn’t free market. It was capital fraud, dishonest business practices, and fiscally unsound policies. All of which are cancer to a free market economy; witness the results.
I merely disagree with Paul’s assertion that our only hope is to accept a socialistic approach to controlling our industry and our culture. In all of history, it has never produced a vibrant economy or a productive people.
Mr. Napier is apparently one of those people who are going to have an extremely hard time accepting the consequences of their own gluttony. He’s far from alone, unfortunately.
Let me put it to you this way: you can’t buy your way out of this one. Lots of people have tried that already, and all it’s gotten them is deeper in trouble. You have to stop consuming so much. We all do. Period.
Daniel Miller: I would argue that capital fraud and all the other things you mentioned are indeed cancer to a free market…but they are also an inevitable result of that same free market. Economists like to focus on equilibrium, when things have balanced out and are working pretty efficiently. They have to tapdance around the points on the graph where the market is in DISequilibrium, and they mainly handwave it by assuming that the market will tend back towards equilibrium.
It’s times like these, when the market is massively, inherently in disequilibrium, that drive economists up the wall. This is the part that just cannot be neatly packaged in a tidy little formula. This is real life.
One of the things that disappoints me about the stimulus package that just got passed by Congress is that it focuses mostly on short-term measures to pump money back into the economy. In the infrastructure category, most of the spending is for repairing and extending the roads and bridges. No argument here that a lot of repair needs to be done, but I’m worried that adding more road-miles will just encourage Americans to put even more miles on their gas-guzzling vehicles, rather than find ways to cut down on driving in the first place.
Same thing with healthcare, most of the stimulus will be simply to pay for private insurance rather than help people stay healthier to begin with. So instead of encouraging Americans to stop eating so much, the stimulus package will just help them pay for their hypertension medicine.
There are a number of good comments made by Dan, Daniel, and Terrell. I tend to agree more with Daniel in his assessment on free market. I don’t see the rampant capital fraud that exists in our financial markets and big industry as an inevitable result of free market. The free market served our country very well until recently.
So what changed? The fat tycoons started operating behind smoke screens and closed doors. They broke laws that have been on the books for decades and weren’t held to established standards of business or ethics. That was not a failure of free market or even the laws. It was a failure in accountability; in oversight, reporting, and regulatory enforcement.
One may argue that the solution would be to have the government take control of big industry and financial institutions. I disagree. The government couldn’t solve a one piece puzzle with detailed instructions. One might say we need more laws and regulation. Why create more laws when we don’t enforce the ones we’ve already got and existing regulations are simply ignored without consequence?
I truly believe free market can and does work. Standards and ethics are the immune system of the free market system. When weakened the cancers of greed, fraud, and deception take root. The solution seems obvious to me. We need to solve the accountability issues – the lackadaisical oversight that permeates oversight and enforcement agencies and deliver hard consequences to the law breakers.
I agree with Terrell. I too am very disappointed with the stimulus package. I had the opportunity to read a paper which detailed how the stimulus money coming to my state (Nevada) will be distributed. Much of the money is going directly to government, agencies, and insurance funding. Education money allocated for Nevada is the lowest per capita for the entire nation. There’s only $30M for energy programs {hello Congress, you couldn’t build a single solar power plant for that amount}. There’s not much money for any real job creation or small business stimulation. I hope other states fared better.
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I just read that 2% of our energy is by wind turbines which is actually higher than I expected. But apparently, scientists are actually saying that land based wind turbines increase temperatures by 1 degree, which is pretty scary. So even a seemingly safe option like wind turbines have big time cons.
Solar power does seem to be the option with the least negatives – other than, of course, cost. Efficiency has a long way to go for it to be cost viable. But hopefully we get there in a couple decades.
People are just now starting to realize that there is no such thing as free energy.
People in my area are putting up wind mills now, and solar panels are popping up in ever farmers back yard. I think it is a step in the right direction.