The New Rules Project just released a comprehensive new report containing some interesting results:
The data in this report, while preliminary, suggest that at least half of the fifty states could meet all their internal energy needs from renewable energy generated inside their borders, and the vast majority could meet a significant percentage. And these estimates may well be conservative.
This is not for your idle interest -- it's in service of a point that the New Rules folks have been tirelessly making for years now: "Homegrown energy is almost always cheaper than imports, especially when you factor in social, environmental and economic benefits." That means Middle Eastern imports, but also renewables imported from neighboring states.
I've been pondering some issues in this vicinity -- the notion that distributed energy has social and, for lack of a better word, democratic benefits that ought to count in our cost comparisons. Pending me thinking it through, though, read the full report [PDF].
Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets
Making buildings more efficient: looking beyond price
Comments
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 10:46 pm
11 Nov 2008
The New Rules projections for cellulosic ethanol are probably overstated by an order of magnitude.
Ped Shed Blog
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endependence Posted 2:46 am
12 Nov 2008
The hierarchy of solutions to energy challenges is:
Personal: stop wasting 30% of the energy we use
Local: identify potential energy sources and work with other members of the local community to make these energy sources available. Champion and insist upon community wide energy conservation efforts (such as converting municipal vehicles to alternative energy and expanding bike paths, bus routes, etc.)
State: do as the report (and Neil Young)suggest and focus on "homegrown" energy
Federal: build the smart grid energy infrastructure and support the development of new sources of energy with tax credits and investments.
Energy independence, we can't do it alone, but we can do it together.
Please sign the Declaration of Endependence at
http://endependence.info/declaration/
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