Read This: Powering the Dream

Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology was not what I expected. It was better, and more meaningful, than that.

Let me explain. I'd heard little bits and pieces about this book long before it was bound together inside a cover. I'm working on my own book about the future of energy right now, and I'd chatted with Alexis Madrigal, Atlantic.com Tech editor and Powering the Dream's author, about our shared thoughts on energy technologies, energy culture, and the way our respective books were shaping up.

From those conversations, I'd been looking forward to an in-depth history of things. I expected to learn about the electric motors that drove some early automobiles ... about the tinkering farmers and eccentric engineers who turned the windmill from a kludgy product of desperation into a well-designed machine ... about the first attempts to capture the power of the sun for useful work, and why would-be the solar revolution of the 1970s never happened. And Powering the Dream does cover all that stuff. And more. There's plenty here to keep Makers enthralled.

But, ultimately, the history of things is just trivia. And it's only really part of what this book is about. The stuff that actually matters—why you really ought to read Powering the Dream—is Madrigal's take on the history of ideas.

When you study the history of alternative energy technology in this country, you don't just learn about science and engineering. You learn about people and culture. You learn about ideologies, and dreams, and what Americans think it means to be an American.

When it comes to energy, what we have created, and how we have used the tools that already exist, has depended more on our ideas and beliefs about what energy ought to be than on the physical limitations of what can and cannot be done.

This is the story that Powering the Dream is really all about.

Madrigal finds this thread running through American dreams about "natural" energy. It's especially prevalent in the way some Americans have latched onto solar power as the one ideal energy source, not because of its technological merits, but because it offers an opportunity to disconnect from the rest of their fellow citizens—to play energy cowboy in an imagined (if not even creepily longed-for) post-apocalypse, where they don't need anybody and definitely don't need the messy shared systems of modern society.

And Madrigal spots the same story happening behind the scenes of the rise of nuclear energy. In this case, researchers raised during America's developmental heyday assumed that the the future would only bring more of what they'd already seen—astronomical year-over-year increases in the amount of energy Americans consume. Their belief that bigger was not just better, but nigh-on inevitable, informed a loop of self-reinforcing ideas that led many scientists to push nuclear power as our only hope for the future long before the technology itself was mature or economical.

Even our use of fossil fuels has been influenced by belief. In the mid-19th century, America's first oil boom in Pennsylvania convinced the nation that Providence had handed us an endless supply of almost-magical substance, a super-transportable, super-dense source of energy that could grant riches like Midas. When the the Pennsylvania oil wells ran dry, everyone was chastened. Momentarily. Then oil turned up in Texas and California, and the dream of limitless black gold took over once again. Even today, after America's oil demand has come to outstrip what our natural resources are capable of supplying and the weight of evidence points to a coming day when the world's oil supplies will peak and then fall, there are still plenty of people clinging to the idea that we will (must!) have all the oil we want, for ever and ever.

Energy isn't just what it is. Energy is what we have decided we want it to be. Sometimes, that fact leads us to make good decisions. Sometimes, it leads us into horrible mistakes. More often, we get a little of both at the same time. But we can't plan out the future of energy without taking a good, hard look how our beliefs and cultural ideas have created its past. We have to come to terms with the fact that our decisions about energy aren't guided by pure economics or pure science, and never have been. If we ignore that, then we're doomed to keep making sloppy choices, or become frozen in a standoff of ideologies disguised as fact—and neither is something we can afford to do right now.

Human society—American society—is reflected in the infrastructures it builds, Madrigal writes. Powering the Dream is a book that makes that fact abundantly clear.

Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology by Alexis Madrigal

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this book from the author. That said, I receive a lot of free review copies of books. I only tell you about the ones I think you really need to read.

Image: Off-shore Wind Farm Turbine, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from pjh's photostream

• [g0d5m15t4k3]

  I really like this point:
  “Madrigal finds this thread running through American dreams about “natural” energy. It’s especially prevalent in the way some Americans have latched onto solar power as the one ideal energy source, not because of its technological merits, but because it offers an opportunity to disconnect from the rest of their fellow citizens—to play energy cowboy in an imagined (if not even creepily longed-for) post-apocalypse, where they don’t need anybody and definitely don’t need the messy shared systems of modern society.”

  I am guilty of wanting solar power to live off the sun and not rely on “the grid” for power. Also guilty of longing for post apocalyptic living.

• [jphilby]

  I’m in the middle of this book after waiting a year for it – having followed the blog Alexis kept while writing it. (Think that stuff’s still online.)

  It’s a good read. More concise on the early 20th century than I hoped for (to be fair, that’s two more books). After a decent segment on the seldom-mentioned DIY windmill proliferation, the book becomes being roaringly insightful after the first Earth Day, pointing out the overlooked fecundity of the following 10 years, and the disastrous policy failures of the Reagan years.

  Looking forward to the rest. For serious students, the bibliography’s a treasure.

• [Anonymous]

  I am in the process of reading the book Merchants of Doubt which was recommended to me by BoingBoing.

  Fred Singer, Bill Neidberger, Ronald Reagan, James Baker, Fred Seitz, and the other movers and shapers (who derailed the objective pursuit of knowledge in order to discredit any science that might lead to effective regulation (because regulation is inherently bad according to their cowboy worldview)) based their writings and projections and legislative actions on the idea that America’s energy use and carbon emissions might very well decrease – they repeatedly said so.

  These people said that global climatic disruption and pollution were their own cure; that exhaustion of resources would impoverish vast numbers of Americans and thus reduce energy use. That is literally the stated end-point of many of Fred Singer’s pseudo-scientific papers, which still are the blueprint for US pollution controls today – impoverishment all but the super-rich. Singer, Seitz and others asserted that people in areas made uninhabitable by pollution (like Fukushima and Chernobyl and Centralia) would migrate out and that this was a desireable outcome! They pointed to the many historical migrations of peoples, which were almost always characterized by titanic suffering and hardship, as evidence that “these things happen” and we should keep on polluting and just accept that most people would be screwed over in the fullness of time. The Christians would go to Heaven regardless.

  It’s true, the sane researchers assumed that people would consume to the limit of their ability to do so, and then some of them projected resource availability increases would continue.

  But the people who wrote policy didn’t really care if energy use went up or down, because they were overwhelmingly either Christian armageddonists or fanatical anti-socialists, or both.

• [Anonymous]

  It’ll be interesting in the next couple decades to see the cognitive dissonance of our beliefs regarding energy (that it’s limitless, that we can never run out, that we can always have it) really run against the fact that energy costs, both for electricity and gasoline, are going to sky-rocket as the price starts to reflect real scarcity. What happens to American culture when gas costs $10 a gallon? What happens to our ideas about energy when we simply can’t afford to have many high-wattage appliances?

  • [AnthonyC]

    Yes, oil will get really expensive. And it will be crushing- we’ll suddenly realize that we’ve done a terrible job planning our cities, and have no affordable way for most people to move around their communities. Sadly, I don’t think there’s a politically viable way to avoid this pain.

    But electricity- I guess I’m more optimistic than you. Coal and natural gas won’t get expensive quite as soon as oil. Also, industry projections have wind and solar being as cheap (per kwh) as coal within 15 years. Storage will be a problem, of course. We may have to put up with having electricity be unavailable (or really expensive) for part of the day, for some period of time. Nuclear could fix that, of course, as could new breakthroughs in energy storage (compressed air, molten salt and other phase change materials, batteries, flow batteries, pumped hydro).

• [mn_camera]

  “…researchers raised during America’s developmental heyday assumed that the the future would only bring more of what they’d already seen”

  The naysayers are equally guilty of this, though in their case I do presume a certain amount of willful blindness. When they decry solar, or wind, or tidal, or algal biodiesel, or anything, they always begin with the false premise that mechanisms and technologies will never improve beyond their current state.

  Even a cursory glance will show that to be erroneous. Improvements happen, then improvements to those improvements.

  And while some post-apocalyptics are indeed creepy (or worse) I think most of them are simply delusional. Though I don’t mean that in a particularly good sense.

• [Ernunnos]

  I have solar power, using a grid-tie inverter, and it actually works better as a shared system. On a personal level, by relying on the grid at night, I eliminate the need for batteries, and all the maintenance, space, and expense they entail. On a collective level, by producing power during the hottest part of the day (when we use the most AC & power in Arizona) it smooths out the spikes in demand. Since my AC doesn’t run constantly even when it’s 115, my panels are basically taking 2-3 houses off the grid at peak. If only 5-10% of homes had such solar systems, it would significantly decrease the threat of rolling blackouts & brownouts like the ones that some areas of the country experienced last summer.

  It’s a win for everyone, and we don’t need a complete transition to realize the benefits. A more decentralized and diverse power generation environment is going to be more resilient.

  • [g0d5m15t4k3]

    Cool, I never thought of it that way. Not so much that you are independent and don’t have to rely on the grid for power, but you make it so its not needed as much. If everyone uses a little less power from the grid because they are getting it for themselves, then it causes less strain on the grid. I like that. Then you’re not screwed if something happens to your solar panel and vice versa you’re not entirely screwed if the grid power goes out.

• [greebo]

  Interesting how Madrigal links alternative energy to American concepts of independence and freedom. In Europe, alternative energy is linked much more strongly with notions of community and equity. For a fun exercise, compare the websites for NREL (in the US) and CAT (in the UK):
  http://visit.cat.org.uk/
  http://www.nrel.gov/visiting_nrel/
  I’ve visited both, and stylistic differences aren’t limited to just the websites…

  The interesting thing to me is that renewable energy, especially wind and solar, is likely to make people even more dependent on the grid, because these technologies only make sense if you also have the infrastructure for balancing regional variability in supply and demand. Or do all you Americans think you’ll just fill your basements with big batteries?

  • [Anonymous]

    We will probably have portions of the population that do, just as we had portions of the population that built their own bomb shelters during the cold war.

  • [Maggie Koerth-Baker]

    Greebo and Ernunnos, total agreement.

    This was really interesting for me, because the section of my book that’s about energy generation (and, particularly, the trend toward decentralization of energy generation) is about this very thing. “Decentralization” doesn’t mean what a lot of Americans seem to think it means. The realities of how these technologies work mean that we’re going to be tied more to one another, not less.

    In fact, one of the scientists I talked to, an expert in distributed generation from Sandia National Laboratory, told me that, as more Americans buy into home solar power, they’re going to have to become “good citizens of the grid.” The grid itself will go from being a tool, to being a community.

    Very, very important stuff that tends to get lost in the noise because it’s not something that fits very well with the American narrative on solar and other renewables.

  • [Anonymous]

    There is potential to store energy at the home as either compressed air or compressed hydrogen. Large banks of batteries may not be needed in the future. Just like the energy creating tech is going to improve over time, so will the energy storage tech.

    • [travtastic]

      This is true, but those are two things that I really don’t want in my basement in any appreciable quantity. If I have some decent property and they’re a good distance away, I could live with that.

• [gmoke]

  As of 2009, the US used 94.6 quadrillion btu’s of energy. About 57% of that energy was “rejected,” never did any useful work. This is the underlying reality of our energy situation and is almost always ignored or belittled.

  Energy independence is a Platonic ideal that harkens back to the US frontier. Edison and Ford played upon that image of independence with their (failed) attempt at autonomous electric homes back around 1914. Dan Nocera of MIT is doing the same thing now with his artificial leaf (which seems to be making great progress).

  I say Solar IS Civil Defense meaning light, radio, cell phone, and extra set of batteries can be powered by a few square inches of PV panel. That’s what you should have on hand in case of emergency and is a significant rise in the standard of living for the 1.5 billion or more people in the world today who do not have access to electricity. Add a hand crank or pedal power generator and you have a reliable source of minimal power day or night. Like all the losses in the electricity we generate, this scale of thinking is also ignored and belittled but it’s where we have to start from if we want to reach 100% of humanity.

  There are readily available solutions to our energy problems with the technology we have available today. The problem is and always has been the lack of imagination to recognize them and the political will to put them in place.

• [Ernunnos]

  “Have to become good citizens of the grid” sounds way too Orwellian. And unnecessarily so. Solar is easy. Just make sure it’s up to code, clean the panels every so often, and don’t turn it off. Which are all things it’s in your own best interest to do anyway. From the consumption end, peak pricing models already convince most people to voluntarily buy programmable thermostats and other load-shedding devices, or just manually put off doing laundry until after hours. You don’t need reeducation camps to get folks to look for a bargain.

  I’ll bet he’s the kind of guy who looks at an ice cream sundae and says dourly, “You know you’re going to need to eat that with an extra long spoon, or you’ll get your fingers all sticky.” Yeah, got one right here, dude. Now stop harshing my mellow.

  • [Anonymous]

    Did Orwell write TRON?

• [Anonymous]

  good points, however one must not forget the darker reasons behind the energy transformation of the last century.

  for example, Big Oil had a pivotal role in dismantling the electric transportation of the 1910s and 20s in favour of gasoline and personal transport.
  the author would argue that the public accepted this change wholeheartedly for the same reason that they accept solar cells today (independence), but i think in the near future we are gonna have to return to public transportation, with oil costing 200$/barrel.

• [Matthew_H]

  How about storing energy in buried flywheels? That sounded like a good idea when I first heard it. One installation per home, fairly safe, environmentally completely neutral.

  • [Anonymous]

    Too lossy. You’re better off running a fuel cell in both directions, converting water to hydrogen and back again, over and over. A flywheel spins down faster than a storage container leaks hydrogen. Unless you are talking the depleted uranium drum type, which are not exactly environmentally neutral ;).

    Hydrogen is a very bad fuel, but a pretty good battery.