Filed under: Eating my shorts | Tags: alternative energy, marketing, renewable energy, solar, Solar energy, solar power
Ah, 2008, the good old days. I walked into the massive solar conference hall in appropriately sunny San Diego, just weeks after the Investment Tax Credit had been approved. The keynote speakers were giddy with excitement. The booths were packed. Solar companies couldn’t keep up with the demand. The data point that hit me was that there were about 400 companies with booths, but over 400 other companies wanted to be included but there wasn’t room – and this was after the organizers had opted for a bigger venue for 2008. The Google of solar energy will probably turn out to be one of those 400 excluded companies, a start up that’s going to launch a solar technology so brilliant it will completely transform our energy usage. Of course, Google believes they will be the Google of clean energy, and if they can do it, God bless ‘em. I think it’s more likely to be someone in a garage in Cambridge or Berkley who’s going to come out of nowhere.
Another revelation came at a panel discussion that included European leaders in solar. Two PowerPoint slides where shown side by side. One showed the solar resources available in the US, the other showed Germany’s. The US gleamed like gold, with broad swaths of the west and southwest showing perfect solar conditions. The Northeast was more purple, yet still fine for capturing the sun. Germany was a shade darker then our Northeast. And yet Germany has the world’s highest amount of solar energy adoption per capita. I asked myself, what’s wrong with this picture?
As anyone in the solar industry knows, Germany is way ahead of us because they’ve had a feed-in tariff, making it possible for homeowners and businesses to sell power generated by their solar panels back onto the grid at above market rates – a great way to make solar more economic. Why does Germany have a national feed-in tariff and we don’t? I believe it’s because we in America have our own Berlin Wall. It’s made of ignorance, built brick by brick with the help of coal and oil companies spreading disinformation about clean energy, topped with a razor wire of lies by people like Michael Steel and Rush Limbaugh who deny global warming, and its perimeter is a minefield of old habits. Need power? Let’s burn something.
What’s urgently needed in this country is a public service campaign on solar and wind. It’s laudable that President Obama has called for change, and is putting money behind the effort to triple clean energy production. But people are simply not going to invest in solar panels for their houses en masse, coast to coast, until they understand what’s in it for them – the thrill of watching their electric meter run backwards. And they are not likely to approve the wind farm in their town if they think wind energy doesn’t work because the wind is intermittent, or the turbines are ugly (as opposed to those scenic nuclear plants).
Soon, our Berlin Wall will fall. And between the shards of broken concrete strewn on the ground a new country – economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable – will slowly rise, illuminated by the power that has always been right before us but somehow beyond our reach.
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Filed under: Eating my shorts | Tags: alternative energy, marketing, renewable energy, solar, Solar energy, solar power
Isn’t Dr. Glenn Rothfeld excellent in the video? It was entirely unscripted and I had no idea what he was going to say. A bezoar? Super models swallowing cotton balls? You can’t make this stuff up.
The blog launched just a few weeks ago, and the response has been extraordinary – beyond anything I expected. Within 24 hours of the video going live, I had received emails from people from California to Europe and Australia. Most of the emails and posts were delightful culinary suggestions for more appetizing ways to eat my shorts. But there were also emails from three solar industry professionals, and our discussions with them are ongoing and very promising. Renewable Energy Weekly heard about the blog and got behind our efforts to promote it. The Boston Business Journal is including the blog in a feature story due out April 10. It’s all good.
So, will I have to eat my shorts? Time will tell. What I do know for sure is that I’m getting to know some great people, and having a ball in the process.
There is, of course, a purpose to all this. Yes, we want to land a solar energy account. But one of the reasons that’s a goal of ours is because we are passionate about renewable energy in all its forms. It’s time to tell the story of solar and wind, and get the country behind clean energy – not just politicians giving speeches, but people choosing to use renewable energy in their communities. What do you think? How will we make this happen?
