The project is called PATH – Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline – and it will move power from the coal-fired plant in Amos, W.Va, to a planned station just south of Frederick, Md., and from there to markets in New Jersey and New York. As planned, PATH will cross Loudoun but leave no power in the county.
Opposition to this power transmission project is building on many fronts. And so it should. This is the same old thinking that just ain’t gonna’ work anymore. You can read a lot more about the issue [HERE]
PATH is Old School thinking, Old School technology. It just feeds the monster. It lines the pockets of politician’s friends. The people in charge are systematically killing our planet and this is more of the same.
But without cheap, abundant energy, won’t the economy collapse?
Whoops, too late!
But don’t we have to have “cheap” coal-fired power?
A New Jersey Utility Company PSE&G has proposed a 120-Megawatt program designed to bring solar panels into every town and neighborhood in it’s service territory this includes the largest pole-mounted solar project in the United States. Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) today asked New Jersey regulators to approve a $773-million proposal to bring the benefits of 120 megawatts of solar power directly to communities and customers throughout its service territory. Read more at the Seitch Blog …
But how will we meet the growing energy demand?
Oh wait, energy demand is actually falling slightly. What’s more, energy conservation could drop as much as 34% if we improved efficiency. A new report coming out of the Rocky Mountain Institute shows just how much of a reduction in electric demand could occur, if only the most energy inefficient US states performed as their most efficient neighbors.
In fact, according to a post at treehugger:
62% of Coal-Fired Electric Power Could Be Displaced. In the report Assessing the Electric Productivity Gap and the US Efficiency Opportunity, the authors come to the conclusion that if the 40 worst-performing states got their collective act together and performed as well as the 10 most-efficient states in terms of electricity usage then a total of 1.2 million gigawatt-hours could be saved annually. That’s equivalent to 62% of the US’s coal-fired electric power...[MORE]
But what about the “Smart Grid”? I heard we need to have that.
Even Al Gore insists the new president should give the highest priority to “the planning and construction of a unified national smart grid.” Presumably this national tangle of wires will ship wind energy from the mid-west and solar power from the southwest to the customers who need it. David Morris at Alternet says:
We lump together the two words, “national” and “smart” as if they were joined at the hip, but in fact each describes and enables a very different electricity future. The word “national” in these discussions refers to the construction of tens of thousands of miles of new national ultra-high-voltage transmission lines, an initiative that would further separate power plants from consumers, and those who make the electricity decisions from those who feel the impact of those decisions.
The word “smart,” on the other hand, refers to upgrading the existing network to make it more resilient and efficient. A smart grid can decentralize both generation and authority. Sophisticated electronic sensors, wireless communication, software and ever-more powerful computers will connect electricity customers and suppliers in real time, making possible a future in which tens of millions of households and businesses actively interact with the electricity network as both consumers and producers. Read more of “Why Obama’s Plan to Help Renewable Energy May Backfire and Aid Big Coal.”
So if coal is Old School, then what?
Just like the internet is a huge network sustained by millions of users, Distributed Energy Generation can be millions of individual power generators sustaining a power grid. Here’s a way to stop feeding the monster. According to Distributed Energy Generation – The New “Internet”:
The Internet revolutionized the world of computing – it took us from a world of large centralized mainframe computers with terminals attached to a world of any-to-any connectivity. The Internet evolved from a military need for survivability; by having a mesh of network nodes that could instantly re-route traffic around outages, it could sustain failures but continue to perform. Distributed generation, referred to as “DG” in industry speak, is essentially the “Internet of Energy” by producing electricity from many small energy sources.
I say we invest in clean alternatives and a close-to-home way of generating and distributing energy. Hey, maybe even local coops to handle the capital investment needed to build and repair the grid. Oh, we already have those too.
Seems like the only thing standing in the way of a cleaner energy plan is us. We need to decide we will no longer tolerate the pollution and destruction associated with coal-fired plants and mega distribution.
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