The Sun shines, the wind blows, the tides roll, and we live on a molten rock. Harvest the abundance.
This is how my blog described itself starting in 2009, and that future has come true. The Obama Administration’s 2020 goal of having solar energy cost less than coal happened, ahead of schedule, and costs are still declining.
There is no reason for new fossil fuel infrastructure today and everyone knows it. China is acting on that knowledge, while America rejects it.
The 21st Century will belong to China.
This isn’t a Trump thing, although it’s easy to blame him. It’s the same resistance we saw in the British Navy to steam power throughout the 19th century. In the end it’s the power of incumbency. The America of the last century was built on oil, gas, and coal and its obsolescence will be resisted to the end.
Our current age demands a complete rethink of how power is generated and used, and what it consists of. The new power is electric, not mechanical, and it can be created anywhere without local pollution.
It’s the electric utility industry that’s mainly being upended, not the fuel industry. Utilities still believe they should own a monopoly on power generation, and that power must come from enormous, centralized plants hundreds of miles from customers.
It doesn’t. They don’t. You can generate electricity on your own front porch, or your own balcony. Windmills don’t have to be gigantic blades over the ocean, separated by miles so they won’t interfere with one another. They can be small devices living wherever wind is created, even on freeway medians, or in your backyard.
The Future is Available Today
The Iran oil crisis is an enormous opportunity for those who believe in this renewable future.
If you don’t have $1,700 to drop on a Bluetti 300-watt solar system, which includes the power generator your panel plugs into, consider the wind.
The best systems are Chinese, but for $130, you can go to Home Depot and get 500 watts of wind power generation for your backyard. At Walmart, $190 gets you a Dwellnix wind turbine with a controller. Or drop $170 at Amazon for a 500-watt wind power system, with electronics, that can work in conjunction with solar panels for 24 hour power back-up.
The cheapest renewable energy is efficiency, and many of the “gasoline” cars being sold today are hybrids. Our 2022 Corolla gets 55 mpg this way, but the 2026 Toyota BZ it shares the driveway with is entirely electric, able to do a round trip to the Master’s next month on a single charge.
My online doppelganger, Opafiets, rode 40 miles over the weekend on his e-bike, soothing his hips and enjoying the sites. Cities across Europe are being transformed by e-bikes, which transform a five-mile commute to work into a daily pleasure. If you don’t like sitting upright, sit back on an e-recumbent, stand on an e-scooter, or roll along at up to 15 mph on a mobility scooter. E-Transport also makes cities quieter, encouraging greater population density, saving every household it touches enormous amounts of money.
Had we bombed Iran back when the late John McCain sang about it, America would have had an energy heart attack. This time, the damage was minor. By 2030, it will hardly matter. Even the oil barons understand it, which is why the Saudis have been buying solar for years.
The Chinese Century
The renewable revolution was invented in America, but it was perfected in China, which I visited in 2009. (Here I am at Shanghai Airport after a 15 hour flight.)
While we continue to subsidize fossil fuels, and insist solar and wind pay their own way, China used its manufacturing prowess to dominate in solar cells, in electric cars, and in the batteries that provide back-up when they’re done ferrying your kids to school.
Elon Musk talked a good game, but he abandoned it when the federal largesse ran out, preferring shinier toys like energy sucking rockets and data centers. No Americans one followed him, so the Chinese are the sole source of what we need to make our country energy independent.
As I’ve said, this isn’t about the current Administration. It’s about decades of subsidies given to obsolete energy infrastructure, much of which would be worthless now if we’d gone at this opportunity as we should have.
That’s all water under the bridge. If China is the new Texas, so be it. The future is fun. The future is fair. They already have won. We may already be there. Welcome to the future.
