About Damn Time

Absent a price on carbon, the development of alternative energy sources on a commercial scale - i.e., wind farms and solar installations to feed the grid - no longer makes sense. In fact, from a purely economic point of view I am not sure it ever did. Coal is too cheap. Demand for renewable energy is only created by renewable portfolio standards, which are voluntary in many states. Government subsidies don't quite cut it. And natural gas is the likely next bridge fuel anyway because of the proximity of shale-gas formations to major demand centers, immediate job creation possibilities as a result of the extraction process, and because natty gas doesn't suffer from the problems of intermittent delivery that plague solar and wind.

But I am loving residential applications of renewable energy sources. I know a guy in Palm Springs, Ca who gets PAID BY HIS UTILITY COMPANY 9 months out of the year because he generates more electricity than he uses, and then sells his excess back to the grid to help his utility company meet peak demand in the land of excess golf courses and air conditioners.

Check out the newest in residential renewable energy technology from Dow, called Powerhouse.



Powerhouse is not without its problems, though. As this article points out, these solar shingles are too expensive for the relatively small amount of electricity they produce ($10 a square foot for 3.5 kilowatts of power). However, as this sort of solar technology becomes more popular and thus more competitive, hopefully more exciting and less expensive products will come out of this market.

Now, the true skeptic would ask whether or not the life cycle of this product - from the mining of whatever crazy crap goes into these things, to the manufacturing and installation process, to their ultimate disposal - actually results in more carbon emissions than the delivery of electricity via fossil fuel. My guess is that skeptic would be wrong, but maybe not by much. Either way, that's a dangerous road to go down, so we won't.

All I have to say is that I would LOVE to be getting paid by United Illuminating Company instead of forking over ample burrito cart fundz to Davo to cover our electric bill each month.