What Matters Most

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

What Matters Most     Dave Bonta is quick to point out that all earthly energy is solar originated in its basis.

“Wind energy is really just the thermal nature of the air currents moving across the earth based on thermals from the heating and cooling of the earth.  Tide energy rolling across the earth is also a form of solar energy, as geothermal is.  All energy, even biomass, is based on solar energy.  And, all of that is renewable since the sun should last millions and millions and millions of years as a dependable resource.

“Fossil energy is actually solar based, too.  Coal, oil and gas are all based in sunshine.”

Although the basis of all energy may be solar, the difference is what energy sources are renewable and what energy sources are nonrenewable.  Renewable include photovoltaic (PV), thermal, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydropower and tidal currents.  Nonrenewable include oil, natural gas, propane, coal and uranium.

What distinguishes renewable from nonrenewable is the amount of time it takes to replenish the energy source.  The nonrenewable sources were formed long ago during earth’s development.  Their supplies are limited.  The renewable sources are replenished in a very short time.  Day after day, the sun shines, the wind blows and the rivers and tides flow.

Carbon-loading of the atmosphere

Dave stresses, “The difference between the two is that renewable energy typically doesn’t increase the carbon-loading of the atmosphere.  It’s carbon neutral.  It’s based on recently sequestered carbon.  It’s not using fossil carbon, carbon that was sequestered years and years and millions of years ago and now being re-released in the form of emissions.

“The difference between a nuclear plant and a solar panel really has to do more with the fact that the solar panel can be renewed.  The energy comes in daily.  The nuclear plant is a finite resource in that the uranium has got to be mined, and it has to be processed, and it has to be sequestered somewhere after it’s been used.  As a waste product, it has to be dealt with.  The solar and the other renewable sources don’t really have those issues.

“When we’re talking about biomass carbon as opposed to fossil carbon,” this is the distinguishing factor, “because that applies to carbon dioxide generation.  And carbon dioxide generation, as you know, creates the blanketing of green house gases that helps to create the green house effect and that’s where the global warming comes from.

“So, when we burn a product like a piece of wood, and we burn it in such a way that it’s releasing carbon, that’s recently sequestered carbon.  That piece of wood is fifty or sixty years old but the carbon was in our recent history.  Carbon that’s coming out of the coal or out of the oil or out of natural gas was sequestered millions of years ago when the atmosphere was different, when it was heavy with carbon.

“And, now by burning those things and re-releasing the carbon from those older, fossilized products, it’s like sticking a straw in the earth and pumping the carbon right back into the atmosphere and recreating an atmosphere that we can’t live with, that life can’t survive with.

“The difference is extremely important.  Yes, all energy is solar based but the difference is what the energy release does to our atmosphere.

“It’s really important if we’re going to start to look at renewable and sustainable solar energies, we keep mindful of the differences, and one of those big differences is carbon.”

Steve Snyder adds, “And, another thing, the difference of renewable, the basis of it, it will always be there, the sun for the next six billion years will always be there, the wind will always be there. 

“But, even if uranium and nuclear power plants were renewable energy, they would not be sustainable because you would always have the waste.  You cannot sustain that type of energy in the long term because eventually the amount of hazard you create and potential danger there, you could not sustain that over the long term.

“If there was an endless supply of oil, if there was an endless supply of coal, the use of those would not be sustainable because it would eventually negatively impact the environment and our lifestyle to such a degree that we could no longer use them.”

“It’s one of the basics,” continues Dave.  “Once we’ve been able to explain that to people, they have that ‘Aha’ moment.”

Sustainable Living: A New Set of Values

If we want to create a sustainable house, then we need to start by re-creating the not so big life.  This is a value issue.  It doesn’t belong to the building industry.  We need to take responsibility for our level of consumption.

Steve begins, “Dave and I are perfect examples of opposite ends of the spectrum.  My wife and I live in a 200-year-old farmhouse.  He lives in a house that he and his wife knew all this information and they started from the ground up and they did everything right to start with.

“My wife and I, we changed our light bulbs.  We put up storm windows.  We blew in cellulose insulation, changed our appliances.  Efficiency and conservation is built-up.  There’s two different ways you can go at it, I went one direction, and he went the other because I moved into an old farmhouse and had to do these things.

“So, there’s lots of ways to do it and solar systems are very scaleable.  We’re hoping we can show there’s nothing to be afraid of.  You can do it little by little or you can go whole hog and start from the beginning and do everything right from day one.”

There are challenges, however, facing the value shift to renewable and sustainable green solutions.  There seems to be three main prejudices.

Dave explains, “It’s a sense that this stuff is just too expensive, it can’t be afforded.  The only way it makes any sense that anybody could ever buy it is if the government hands out checks.  That’s a prejudice that goes back to the first solar dawn back in the early 80’s.

“The other prejudices have to do with whether or not solar actually works, whether or not the technology is good enough to actually replace fossil fuel.  People hear that a solar panel is a 14-15% efficiency, they say, ‘My electric heater is 100% efficient.’ So, when you start to look at things like that, it makes it a more difficult challenge.

“It’s true that solar panels don’t have much more than a 14 or 15% efficiency in most cases but the resource that you’re drawing from is unlimited.  And so, even if it’s only 5 or 10%, it’s still cumulatively a huge amount of power that can come down and be captured.”

“And, it’s free power,” Steve adds.

“Yeah, it’s free power once the initial investment is made,” confirms Dave.

“The other prejudice against solar is it’s bone ugly.  And that was, again, part of the first dawn of solar when a lot of folks got into the business and started hanging all kinds of things off houses that looked like Coney Island.

“In a lot of cases, the people who were doing this were into it for the government incentive checks.  As soon as the government incentive checks stopped coming, they went out of business promptly and they left a lot of junk on people’s roofs.  After a couple years, it quit working and the people were left with a bad taste in their mouth about whether solar really works or can work.

“So, those are the three prejudices we have to combat.”

Dave concludes, “Solar and green, they are beautiful and they can be worked into a design for any home and to be elegant and be lovely all for themselves.

“The other thing that we’re trying to say is that it is affordable.  Now, certainly government incentives help.  And, there’s going to be, I suppose, under this new administration what they’re calling a ‘New Green Deal.’  And, they’re going to be putting money into our infrastructure.  That’s fantastic!  That’s exactly what we need to do and I’m happy to see that come and, naturally, we support that.

“But, the other thing is the fact of whether or not it actually works.  It will work, it works splendidly but it’s all a question of re-sizing our demand.

“If we want to keep using at 40 or 50 or 60 kilowatt hours a day….if we want to keep heating the night sky by not insulating our homes or windows….if we want to maintain wasteful habits of driving giant, giant cars around that suck up 6 miles of gas for every mile….if we want to do those kind of things then no amount of energy is enough.

“We have to start to look at what we actually use and once we look at our demand, and once we look at our load, then it’s easy to come up with an affordable and sensible answer to that.  And then, we can make that beautiful and we can also make that affordable.

“So, those are the three things we’re asked to do.  When most people come to understand that they’re wasting more power than they’re actually using, then they say, ‘Gee, what can I do about that?’  Well, ‘Thank You,’ that’s the right question.  We can help you answer that question.”