The popular green movement is excessively credulous. I suspect this movement is not unique in regard, but for the sake of the movement, it is extremely important to be careful, measured, and realistic.
There is value in being optimistic. It’s difficult or impossible for a movement to survive without optimism. However, in the current environment, there’s too much emphasis put on the little things that might be big. For example, here’s part of a recent press release about a 40 kilowatt solar installation in New York City (for reference, a typical load value for NYC is in excess of 5,000,000 kilowatts.).
Governor Paterson stated, “Now New York businesses who invest in solar energy are allowed to sell excess generation back to the utility grid…
I wholly support being able to net meter and sell back to the grid.
… often at times when it’s most needed.
Ok. Let’s stop again. This solar installation first serves the building upon which it is installed. It then sells the excess to the grid. Because it’s in the city, it’s going to need power the most exactly when the city most needs the power the most. In other words, its ability to help is inversely proportional to the amount it’s needed.
The solar energy system at Big Sue will relieve stress on New York City’s overburdened electrical infrastructure by delivering locally generated, clean solar energy…”
Like I said above: 40 kW installation in a 5-million kW zone. Although, to be fair, it’s possible that the site is located in the most electrically congested pocket of New York, at which point it’s relative size become 40:600,000.
I hope all this works. I hope it’s duplicated many times over and that it actually benefits everyone. However, from my perspective, this type of thing should be sold and paraded after the fact, and after numerous duplications.
Here’s another example from Treehugger.com (a Discovery company) pulls “10 Small-Scale Wind Turbines Cut NYC Apartment Building’s Electric Costs in Half” from a New York Times article. Keep the Treehugger title (10 Small-Scale Wind Turbines Cut NYC Apartment Building’s Electric Costs in Half) in mind when reading the following sentence from the NYT article:
The turbines, which collectively cost $100,000, could halve the annual utility bill for the common spaces, to $9,000 from $18,000, Mr. Bluestone said.
Notice the operative word, “could” and the other important phrase, “common spaces.” A more truthful blog post title would have been, “10 Small-Scale Wind Turbines Are Optimistically Hoped to Cut NYC Apartment Building’s Hallway Lighting Costs in Half.”
I could go on and on about how this is just par for the course for any topic. However, if there really is a “big picture” then cheap tricks and infomercial-esque attention grabbers are not the way to go.
