Oct 09
25
Energy, Media, People
Some people are in denial about climate change. But that already puts a pejorative spin on the concept, doesn't it?
And some people are in denial about peak oil.
As long as you believe in one of the two above read on…
Over the next few years we are going to have to solve a lot of big problems on the planet: Fresh potable water is perhaps the biggest, followed by reduction in atmospheric CO2, followed by finding new energy sources… There are plenty more, I know.
One thing that we are starting to understand is the complexity of the interdependency of systems that exist. Solve one problem and the unintended consequences stand there waiting to trip you up with an even bigger problem. That is how we got to the GFC – the solution that was used to solve the tech wreck was cheap cash, and what it got us was the housing bubble and sub prime.
Now one of the big problems that we have to solve is easily transportable energy. We need that because we are now addicted to manufacturing stuff in places where there is cheap labour and shipping it to where there is consumer demand – typically on the other side of the planet.
Demand is driven by media – whether it is free to air, cable, satellite or P2P – ads, product placements, and programs themselves all conspire to create demand. So demand is now ensuring that everyone wants the stuff that they see other people using, particularly the glitterati.
The energy companies want to ensure that their business model survives just as the content companies wanted to ensure theirs does. So the content companies fight tooth and nail to stop P2P. And meanwhile the technology companies sell more tools and the telcos sell more bandwith. The energy companies don't want a hydrogen economy or a solar economy unless they own it and control it. So they lobby governments to just remain steady as they are… That is why it has taken so long for electric cars to get to market, and it why Toyota has been so smart in introducing the Prius. A car that still requires hyrocarbons doesn't threaten the status quo so sneaks under the radar. But it gets people thinking and acting.
But clearly hybrids are not the answer. Nor is bringing more coal fired power stations on line the answer to the electrical power problem. Nor is nuclear. As people are starting to realise – it takes a long long time to commission and build a nuclear power plant. And we still don't know how to de-commission them.
The answer to the energy problem is not necessarily solar either. Nor is it necessarily wind. But what I am pretty sure of is that the answer to the energy problem is to decentralize power generation. P2P power is what we need. Power that is fed into the grid by people who have their own generation units and who offer their power using an auction system that rewards them based on sliding scale of prices dependent on the availability of large amounts of power.
Ceramic Fuel Cells Limited seems to have a technology that goes a long way down the road toward providing one part of this problem – that of the localized generation of power. If there was a web based management system that enabled the transactions to easily take place, what you would then have is a potential for an EBay of national power.
The problem with this is going to be that the big power companies are going to want to stop a decentralized solution from taking place, just like the content companies want to stop the decentralized distribution of copyrighted content.
So how might a local network of power generators look? One where the power generator could be co-owned by mulitple residents in a community, leased from a company like Ceramic Fuel Cells using the existing cabling that is in situ? Who would own the power lines and could the existing power lines be utilized? Who would then service those power lines? Could the big power companies of the future become line rental companies that provide arbitrage tools on line for local communities to share and sell power to each other where the big power company only acts as a sales agent and has no equipment?
Perhaps media has a key role to play in this scenario by ensuring that the glitterati are the first to adopt such a strategy, and by ensuring that ordinary people demand the same as they see in the movies…