For me, the most inspiring part of yesterday's Sustainable Cleveland Summit was the appearance
and presentation by Jeremy Rifkin [1] via teleconference.
Rifkin does not beat around the bush. We are screwed. He is not going to sugar coat it. We have to CHANGE our ways NOW.
Inertia is killing us. But, he offered some hope with a mantra of distributed versus centralized energy supply. He pointed to success in Germany to address energy generation and to the distribution model demonstrated by the Internet, which has changed our overall mentality and capacity for immediate change. He offered an immediate energy strategy with five pillars:
- Adopt a 20% renewable mandate
- Use Existing Infrastructure
- Provide storage for intermittent energies (solar, wind) with hydrogen fuel cells
- Build maintain an Energy Internet (Smart Grid) so software can manage energy distribution|sharing
- Logistics platform. Don't build pilot projects-build connectivity. Connect-Store-Share
Digitize the GRID for lateral control and sharing (This obviously will not sit well with the power and $$ hogs we live with in NEO--but appreciative inquiry...look to our strengths...not our weaknesses):
Rifkin closed his presentation with a model (San Antonio) [2] that shared Cleveland's history of maintaining a separate municipal utility company (Cleveland Public Power). CPP has the potential to build connectivity and to share distributed energy production--one neighborhood at a time.
Rifkin encourages us to think as a human family for the sake of our children and our collective future. I hope that our leadership will heed his advice.
RELATED ARTICLES:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-the-us-needs-a-networked-ener... [3]