Renewable energy, Cleantech and sustainability have acquired a patina of political bias over several decades of our 20th-21st energy policy development. The current advocates of the Clean, Green economy in Colorado describe a pristine world of the future where we are free of the bad old energy sources in fossil fuels, and renewable energy supports us all. But this advocacy has come with a cost - it has created a political backlash that defeats many efforts toward creating a sustainable energy industry, and makes sustainable energy policy...unsustainable.
The drive for energy independence began in the 1970s under President Jimmy Carter. But beginning with the Reagan administration, the push toward renewables and energy independence was abandoned, then revived under Clinton, lost under Bush, and revived under Obama. Again.
In the ebb and flow of efforts to achieve energy independence, we have been defeated by two essential factors: changes to the political leadership, and periodic troughs in the prices of gas and oil.
A truly sustainable energy policy would be able to hold it's own against these two factors. The requirements for truly sustainable policy are, (A) that it has achieved bi-partisan support, and, (B) that it is economically viable in long term competition with fossil fuels.
Sustainability must mean sustainability during changes political administrations, and during periods of price volatility in the fossil fuel sector. Sustainability means absolutely nothing if every time the governor's office changes parties, the will to construct renewable and sustainable sources of energy evaporates.
The cap and trade program, or carbon taxes, are a step in making renewables more competitive with fossil fuels, but we will be complacent to a fault if we do not -(A) begin looking at the current menu of renewables,(B) start making the harsh evaluations of what seems to be working now, and what remains experimental, and(C) sensibly include fossil fuels in our calculations of future energy sources.
Ethanol? Doesn't it now look like a farm subsidy? Didn't it always? Bio-fuels? Doesn't that look like a subsidy for research programs in the bio-science sector?
I am not arguing that there should not be farm subsidies, or that we should not support basic research in the biosciences. What I am suggesting, however, is that we need to accurately describe the reason for these types of funding and not get distracted or misled by using the label of the cause de jure for programs that have no real effect in the renewable energy sector or which do not lead to sensible and sustainable energy policies.
No technology in the renewable sector should be abandoned, but all of them should be subjected to sensible economic review and assessment of their prospects for true scalability.
Sustainable means these technologies will not evaporate with the end of the current governor's administration in Colorado, and that a hard-nosed economic analysis will be a part of any advocacy of renewable energy and fossil fuel, going forward.
dmissey@denvertechnologytransfer.com
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