Yesterday's sessions transitioned rather seamlessly into post-session drinking networking, which went on until 4:30 in the morning, so I never got a chance to write them up. Rather than attempt to cover the whole day through my current semi-nauseous haze, I want to focus in on a presentation from Brian Keene of Smart Power.
It was about marketing clean energy, and it began with a stark statistic: In surveys, 84 percent of U.S. consumers say they would be willing to purchase renewable energy. How many actually do? Three percent.
Why the vast gulf? That's what Smart Power spends its time investigating and attempting to overcome. The core of the problem is that clean energy has been marketed to U.S. consumers in a soft-focus, children-running-through-green-fields sort of way, focused on its environmental benefit. Environmental benefit will get you good answers on a survey, but it's not a purchasing motivator. People get that it's environmental advantageous; their worries lie elsewhere.
A few things I found fascinating. First, despite a fairly common assumption among enviros, people do not hate fossil fuels. They view fossil fuels as a valued old friend, feel some sadness that their time is ending, and have considerable worry about whether any of the purported replacements will be as capable.
Second, the majority of people, when they hear clean power, think of distributed power -- i.e., solar panels on your rooftop and wind turbines in your back yard. They're just not particularly aware of grid-connected clean energy power plants.
Third, just about everyone, even those enthusiastic about it, think clean power is "out there" in the future, a someday sort of thing.
It's important to keep these things in mind when approaching the public about clean energy.
There are four main barriers to wider embrace of clean power:
- Reliability: People don't think clean energy is as strong or reliable as fossil fuels -- they're not convinced it can do the job.
- Availability: They don't know where or how to go about purchasing it.
- Cost: Not only do they think clean power costs more, but they think they have to buy into a whole lifestyle -- hemp, tofu, sacrifice, etc. That's a big jump to take.
- Inertia: People do what they've always done.
The key is to convince people that clean energy is normal -- or in Smart Power's words: "It's real. It's here. It's working." Keene recommended focusing on teenagers, who are big influencers in their households and who once persuaded can be advocates for life. This can be done through Facebook and Interwebs and blah blah you kids get off my lawn!
Anyway, this is stuff every enviro should know. Shut up about the environment. Start talking about strong, stable, reliable power that families can depend on. A grateful nation will thank you.
Why buying cheap energy certificates worsens climate change
‘Heretic’ battles straw man
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rodneylbrownjr Posted 6:16 am
12 Jul 2008
http://www.slate.com/id/2191156/
I'm not a fan of every example described in the article, but there's strong evidence that the opt-out system for 401(k) plans works very well. Could a utility use it to encourage customers to buy green power, while respecting their autonomy to opt out if they want? Has anyone tried this? I've read about a proposal to do it in Australia, but haven't heard if anyone has actually done it.
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stopgreenpath Posted 5:48 am
13 Jul 2008
Having been burned by Enron, Big Oil, Sempra and basically every other Big Energy mercenary, I don't want another dime of my money, another acre of my public wilderness or another private home DONATED to the same monopolists in an era when there is NO need for massive remote combustion and lengthy transmission.
Big Solar would have us believe that only the Mojave can provide any power from the sun, but Japan and Germany have CONCLUSIVELY proven that is just another lie to justify using our money to re-entrench monopolies instead of shifting policy towards ubiquitous point of use renewables.
ALL the money and perqs are flowing towards Big Energy instead of towards us. ALL the Big Enviros are partnered with Big Energy (see CEERT) gabbling about massive solar "farms" and wind "farms" as the solution (conveniently ignoring the stupendous toll these wasteful projects take on the exact planet we are supposed to be preserving). They have agreed to sell out ratepayers completely, and the environment almost completely, for some un-defined, delusional hope that killing huge intact ecosystems will prevent global warming.
What is needed is concerted action to make local, point of use renewable power systems affordable, flexible and rewarding for everyone. I work with heavy right-wingers, working classers, limousine liberals, city and rural dwellers and every single one of them agrees that they want to OWN THEIR OWN SYSTEM and reduce the utilities to a normal, modest part of the energy free markets, instead of Fickle, Selfish Dictators who get to socialize all their costs and privatize all their profits. What's not to love about getting paid for doing the right thing? why is that privilege limited to massive corporations? Is this still a nation of individuals, or are we subjects to the Corporate Aristocracy?
The main problem is that the question is being framed, a la Karl Rove, as "Big Fossil" vs. "Big Renewables" when Big Renewables and Big Fossil are one and the same - see T. Boone Pickens - and the real question here is "Big Energy Monopolists" or "Ratepayer Owners Saving the Planet While Making Money." Start framing the issue accurately and you will get accurate answers. Start creating policy which educates people about the options they are not being offered, and you get public outcry that their legislature is merely a puppet of Big Energy, whether it's Big Solar, Big Nukes or any other face of the same monster.
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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JMG Posted 6:01 am
13 Jul 2008
No soap, apparently. They persuaded the persuadable and everyone else went about their business of consuming ever-increasing amounts of fossil fuels, unchecked by responsible building codes, land-use planning, or any other of the demonized "command and control" methods.
So the regulated utilities merrily went about pushing heated towel bars and ginormous spa tubs for the $30,000 master bathrooms that were the size of small villages, gigantic upright refrigerators that turned all the efficiency gains into doo-dads (TVs in the door! Through the door ice-makers! Self-defrosting!) and the plasma screen TVs, halogen bulbs and all the other accessories of the "good life."
The reason that only 3% buy what 84% claim they will buy is that the state utility commissions have not wanted to grapple with the free rider issue inherent in green power. People who sign up to pay more for "green" power know that, in nearly all cases, their power still mostly comes from the dirty coal plant down the road, and that their money is actually going to produce green power elsewhere for entry onto the grid. And, for their trouble and the extra expense, the utilities promise to keep raising their rates in step with everyone else's -- in other words, there's no benefit to the early adopters. They don't get guaranteed rate stability or any other reward for investing to add green capacity --- they get precisely the same electricity as their next-door neighbor who didn't join the green power program, and their rates go up the same.
The optimal strategy is, of course, a carbon tax that captures the externalities in power production and adjusts consumer prices accordingly. There's no reason that people who want to do the right thing should be paying more than the people who are happy to burn coal. Absent that, then the utility commissions at least have to ensure that customers who voluntarily tax themselves to purchase green power get some kind of reward down the road -- such as kWh per kWh price guarantee (for every green kWh you buy now at a premium, you get to buy power at that rate when the green power trades at a discount, i.e., after the carbon taxes or cap-and-trade costs kick in).
THAT would change the calculus faster than any amount of exhortation.
The 5% Project
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mgemme Posted 12:59 pm
14 Jul 2008
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TaylorHornung Posted 1:03 am
15 Jul 2008
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