I said last night that I was going to take the next few days to outline what CWLP is proposing with their five standards. I wanted to start, however, by providing a little bit of context, in the form of an alternate vision for how Springfield can meet its energy needs, because I feel that it's only by stepping back and changing our ideas about what CWLP is for and how we use energy that the importance of these standards really starts to become clear.
Right now, we're on what Amory Lovins has called a hard energy path, characterized (on the electricity side of things) by high energy consumption and massive centralized electricity generation facilities. This path requires occasional massive public construction efforts, and has all of the problems typical of centralization and single-resource dependency.
The alternative is a soft energy path, which is characterized more by renewable energy resources, distributed across the landscape, as well as greater use of passive technologies (such as working with heat from sunlight, rather than against it) and heightened efficiency. This path meets changing energy demand in smaller increments, paced to those changes, rather than having to proceed in big clumps, with excess capacity slowly giving way to scarce capacity.
That's the pitch for a soft energy path as a smart infrastructure choice. The soft energy path, of course, is also a better fit for a world that needs to reduce its carbon intensity, as well as all for reducing all the other environmental problems that bedevil coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. Finally, the soft energy path is also a much more local path, prioritizing the energy that flows through Springfield's borders.
Literally decades ago, Lovins wrote a book about this, Soft Energy Paths, arguing that on just about every measure--from environmental performance to job creation and sustanence to financing--the soft energy path beats the hard energy path. (It's available through the Lincoln Library, though you have to request it from Decatur.)
One of the great things about Lovins' phrase is its recognition that these choices are a path, a route that we've taken, which has led us away from the other route. Our ability to today immediately adopt a soft energy path is limited. We don't have the infrastructure for it, we don't have the organizational support for it, we don't have the market mechanisms in place for it, we don't have the engineering standards we need to ensure that the system remains reliable and safe.
And that's what's at issue in the standards that CWLP is considering right now. Here's what they have to grapple with:
- Smart Metering
- Interconnection
- Net Metering
- Fossil Fuel Efficiency
- Fuel Diversity
Each one of those, save fossil fuel efficiency, is in some way crucial to developing a soft energy path for Springfield, through a combination of setting engineering standards, setting the economic rules that govern how people decide how and when to use energy and whether to install small-scale renewables, and--importantly--through goal setting.
I hope that I don't shock anyone when I say that CES is a tad underwhelmed by CWLP's position on these standards. Overall, I'd characterize what CWLP is proposing as tinkering around the edges with each standard, but without any real commitment to developing a robust alternative to what they do now. That shouldn't be surprising. As CWLP staff were consistent in pointing out, they have a lot of experience in utility operations (probably something on the order of 130 years experience among the members of each team that worked on each standard). They meant that to be impressive, and it is, but it's also an Achilles heel: they are used to a certain way of doing things, and lacking a sense of crisis or strong leadership, inertia is going to tend to drive them to keep on keepin' on.
CES feels that it isn't good enough. We feel that a soft energy path is preferable to a hard energy path, on its own merits, as well as because of the climate crisis and impending greenhouse gas regulations. (As an aside, President Bush is talking about setting carbon reduction goals by 2008. Caps on carbon emissions are coming, and soon. I'd be surprised if we don't get caps in place before the next round of aldermanic elections.) Even if you don't think the soft energy path is immediately preferable, I think most people would agree that laying the foundation that allows us to have the option in the future is a smart move.
But here's where my criticism of CWLP staff ends. While I think there's more room than they've shown for internal leadership on this issue, the real leadership, the real motivation for change has to come from us--Springfield citizens: CWLP's owners. This is our opportunity to lead, to tell CWLP where we want them to take us.
Last night, at the utility committee, that committee forwarded the ordinance approving CWLP's contract for the second wind power purchase to the full city council. These wind power purchases are for 10 years. Ten years from now, we will almost certainly be in the early stages of a post-carbon world. That means two things are going to be more expensive: coal-fired electricity generation and the wind power whose contract will be just ending. The time to develop an alternate source of carbon-free energy is now. Lovins has given us a vision we can use to get started. The federal government has given us something to coalesce around to start talking about that vision. CWLP has a proposal on the table. It's our turn to step up and make a decision.
Stay tuned for our comments on each standard.