Powering the Sustainable Society

Since the industrial revolution, the majority of our power comes from a centralized approach coupled with a distribution grid.  This method can be traced back to the discovery that energy could be generated by burning coal.  Once the environmental footprint and health issues of burning coal began to surface, alternative technologies began to be researched and used.  At the heart of sustainable development lies the search for the best alternative energy source.  First, the reduction in our consumption of energy needs to be addressed.  Many alternatives fail to compete with fossil fuels because of the high demand for energy.  Secondly, it may be critical to implement local power sources through a decentralised approach rather than the traditional centralized approach.  Some of the decentralised alternative energy sources being explored and implemented today are solar and geothermal, energy from waste and wind.  There are many benefits from the decentralised approach: large cooperations will begin to disappear and small local businesses will begin to supply their communities with power.  Currently, in Canada only 1% of our energy sources are renewable. 

Reducing our Energy Consumption

Unfortunately, between 1990 and 2005 our energy consumption experienced drastic increases.  Even though energy efficiency was increasing our consumption was out weighing the efficiency.  This is largely due to the bigger, faster and stronger mentality retained by North Americans.  For instance, the size of home increased by 23m² even though family sizes decreased.  The number of televisions increased from 1 per household to 1 per person!  In addition, the number of light trucks on the road has also increased.  The advances in efficiency, unfortunately, cannot be seen until consumption habits have changed.   Look into how to make your home more energy efficient.

Local power Sources and the Decentralized approach

One reason local power works is that it puts jobs and money back into your communities.  Local businesses distribute the power to their communities, who pay for the power and the wages of the employees.  It also reduces lost energy through the large grid systems and reduces the need for generation stations.  Localizing power also allows the consumers to see exactly where their power is coming from and environmental impacts from the generation of power are directly experienced by the consumers purchasing the power.  This is important as it may lead to the public demanding “green” power.  In the centralized system, it is easy to pay your power bill without thinking about the environmental damage that was created by every kilowatt consumed.  If the Alberta oil sand’s tailings ponds were in your backyard, you would be forced to see the environmental damages. You would probably even pay more for energy if the tailings ponds could be removed and an alternative energy source utilised instead. 

The decentralised approach also encourages people to become creative in their power generation, implementing methods that are community specific.  The variety in power generation across communities may even contribute to the identity of communities, increasing the social capital of the regions.  This may even result in rapid technological advances as each community would be responsible for a cheap and efficient source of energy with minimal environmental impacts.  This will also encourage continual technological advancements.

The idea of microgeneration will wipe out the current centralised approach and with it the stride towards nuclear power, which despite some advocates claims, is not the answer to alternate energy.  Nuclear power may reduce the amount of fossil fuels being burnt, but it provides more problems as it produces tonnes of nuclear waste that cannot be safely disposed of or renewed.  We need to forget about digging things out of the ground and using them for energy in a non renewable method! Haven’t we learned from coal and oil?  Things that were buried deep in the Earth’s crust were never meant to be in our hands.  

Diversity - The Underlying Theme of Sustainability

Currently, a great deal of research has been conducted on alternate energy.  It is important to understand that if the new form of energy is to be sustainable and able to resist change, it must not be ONE type of energy generation.  There is power in diversity, even in our energy sources.  If we learn one thing from the global use of fossil fuels for energy it should be that we should never put all of our eggs in one basket.