ENERGY DIVERSITY
Essential to Our Survival
First Thoughts
When I lived in Michigan, my roommate dated an architect who would only design houses that would rely on solar heating. If you’ve never lived there, you wouldn’t know that winters are very dark. The sun doesn’t come out for weeks at a time. This architect’s policy sounded really stupid to me. Why wouldn’t you want to have options?
The Trigger
What triggered this blog was a power failure we had just before preparing dinner. As usual, our power company (hard-working, reliable, but blamed for everything by politicians, PG&E), under-promised and over-delivered, getting us back online in less than ½ hour. It was a major outage, so that was a delight. But it made me think. During this time, we never lost heat or hot water, as both are powered by natural gas. We also discussed the possibility of taking my ICE (internal combustion engine) car somewhere outside the outage range to eat dinner. We had options.
Limiting Diversity, Losing Choice
Our politicians dream of a day when everything is powered by renewables. However, the “renewables” they favor are only solar and wind, which are clearly unreliable. As of now, you can’t store the energy from the sun or wind for long periods of time. That means that you have to hope that you have near-constant wind or sun. I’m not sure where you live, but I can tell you that the Bay Area is not gifted with this.
And yet, this is all the “diversity” they are willing to offer. Governor Nuisance is continuing to insist that we divest ourselves of ICE cars and move to electric, despite having to tell us this summer not to charge the cars as we were having power shortages. Also, our failing economy doesn’t support most of us from affording these very pricey cars. To add to the fun, it takes 10x the amount of water to put out a car fire with the batteries in electric cars, water California doesn’t have.
Biden and the WEF also insist that we MUST do this because climate change is an emergency. I would say that eliminating the option to have reliable power would become a much greater emergency. Mother Nature is a fickle woman. Think back to my story of winters in Michigan. If you don’t get enough sun to power your solar panels throughout a long and dark Michigan winter, most people will freeze to death.
Where Diversity is Good
Given the drumbeat cries for diversity, perhaps we should expand the definition to include diversity of choice, especially in power. To ensure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, doesn’t modern society need to have energy choice as well? Doesn’t everyone deserve this, even those who can’t afford to buy solar panels or to have enough land to support wind turbines?
Diversity of Choice
We are blessed with the ingenuity of our people, who continually innovate to improve our lives. Government wouldn’t have given us the iPhone, modern medicine, healthier food and reliable transportation. Let’s double down on innovation and exploit all viable options. Sure, add solar and wind to the equation, but let’s have it all.
Increasing our natural gas has been a good thing. Power was not a problem under Trump because he liked the idea of having a variety of sources for energy, especially energy America could generate for itself. We were a power-exporting country for the first time in a long time. Don’t believe the lies about natural gas and stoves; we’ve had them forever (and even Jill Biden has one); they are perfectly safe.
Let’s add to our current power mix of petroleum fuels, natural gas, wind, solar and water. We need to double down on the new, smaller and safer nuclear power plants and look into the world of hydrogen. If we support all kinds of great ideas, inventers will lead the way with even more ideas. And keep in mind, the data is out there on the damage electric cars do to the countries supplying the rare earth metals. The batteries can’t be recycled. And of course, the cars must be charged with something. Imagine trying to drive with a solar panel on your roof.
When challenges arise, smart people are always there to find solutions. Governments merely get in the way. Let’s maximize our choices for power and ensure that no matter what happens, we can turn on lights, heat and yes., the internet, whenever we want.
