My column up at Sustainable Business Oregon

Practically, it is hard to imagine a technology that wastes 2.2 kilowatt-hours for every single kilowatt-hour produced is surviving into the 22nd century. Let’s hope it doesn’t; it simply isn’t sustainable. We should be imagining that next century now — one without a crisscross labyrinth of ugly transmission lines, one with thousands of independently functioning renewable energy microgrids.

Time to start imagining the next century rather than sinking more money into the last century’s folly.

As I have been railing for years now, importing essential services like energy and food exports dollars. Once those dollars leave the county they are no longer available to reinvest in sustainable jobs and local infrastructure. Sadly, not many of our civic leaders understand this well known economic dynamic and The World editorial staff don’t either. Consider this graf from a March 26, 2010 editorial supporting privatizing public minerals. (my thanks to whomever typed this because it isn’t available online)

Oregon Resources has begun building a $45 million plant to extract chromite and other minerals from ancient sand dunes. It has its permits, and it has several mining sites. It wants to explore an additional 6,000 county-owned acres, with the prospect of paying millions in royalties.

Main has speculated publicly that the county might conduct its own mineral exploration and mining, but the idea is fantasy. Would the county rehire its laid-off road workers to drive loaders and backhoes, expecting them to mine more efficiently than private enterprise? Would the county build a processing plant in competition with Oregon Resources, expecting two local plants to be more profitable than one?

Coos County taxpayers don’t belong in the mining business. Instead, our chronically underfunded county needs to make the best deal it can with the one company proposing to pay royalties.

Especially take note of the phrase questioning whether county workers can possibly be more efficient than private enterprise. Guess what! Study after study shows that when managing public resources, public management is, in fact, more efficient. Read one here Does it Matter Who Owns the Wind in Big Stone Montana? Since I have written about this before and quite recently look here.

Check out the comparison of publicly managed wind farm compared to allowing a private corporation to come in and manage wind energy for a mere royalty from the study above. Community owned wind shows higher rates of return to the taxpayer on every level. Not shown in this graf is the efficiency of the wind farm is higher also.

The World editorial staff are not alone holding these archaic views of private enterprise being more efficient but statistical and empirical evidence simply doesn’t support it. When you factor profit into any equation services are sacrificed. With today’s Wall Street model quarterly returns are critical to ratings affecting borrowing capacity for private entities. As such, quality and maintenance and long term impacts are sacrificed in order to make quarterly margins. For essential services like power, health, road maintenance and public safety and management of community resources the for profit model is a disaster for the consumer.

In the March 15, 2010 edition of The New Yorker in a well written article by George Packer about Martinsville, VA once booming until NAFTA sent all the textile jobs overseas. Martinsville is an area very much like Coos County and sports a 20% unemployment rate. The article notes some harsh statistics. Ninety cents of every dollar spent on gas leaves the county. Eighty six cents of every dollar spent at a big box store like Walmart or Staples, leaves the county. Now The World is mocking Commissioner Bob Main for attempting prudence and they are advocating to have 97 cents of every dollar earned off public resources LEAVE THE COUNTY!

Who actually wrote the editorial? Clearly they haven’t done an economic impact analysis either. Whoever they are they need to rethink their allegiance to Reaganomics and take Economics 101. If that doesn’t work, just look around you – the evidence is overwhelming and right before your eyes.

The New Yorker article is really about decentralization, one of my favorite topics and about rural America going back to its roots, taking care of itself and once again being independent of corporate influence. Local entrepreneurs in Martinsville are creating bio-diesel and reinvesting local money back into the local economy. What a concept! Let me repeat, Coos County can make more money simply by importing less electricity and thereby exporting fewer dollars than they will ever earn handing off a mineral lease to an Australian mining company who will likely just flip the deal once they sign a lease anyway. Coos County would do well to grow its own food too…

This week I met with Congressman Peter DeFazio in his DC office about the Western Oregon Wind Project a 5MW renewable energy smart/micro-grid to generate $2 million in alternative funding for local schools. Happily, he agreed to carry the request to the House Appropriation’s Energy and Water Subcommittee but cautions it is a very competitive arena and he has received $800 million in requests from the 4th District alone.

In Coos County the unemployment rate has reached almost 14% and Coquille Schools are facing an $850,000 budget reduction next year. More than ever our local leaders need to start looking for alternatives for our greatest resource, our children. Oregon already has one of the shortest school years in the nation while at the same time spending more on corrections than higher education. There is a correlation between poor education and crime and prisons.

Studies have indicated for a family of four to make ends meet and have one stay at home parent requires $24 per hour. The WOW will save or create 196 family wage jobs right out the gate and because the $1million now being exported out of the local economy to import power will stay local many more jobs will spring up. Repeating the WOW template ten times will generate, over ten years, $310 million to put back into Oregon schools.

Additionally, $35 million in federal stimulus money is being set aside for projects in Oregon that reduce fossil fuel emissions and energy use. Coos County can harvest electrons through its rich wind and solar resource and sell those electrons just exactly as it harvests timber and get paid extra to do it by helping the state achieve carbon neutrality.

Before returning to Oregon I am meeting with the US Department of Energy to learn how best to bring these and other federal energy stimulus dollars into our area working through the Oregon DOE. Opportunities are abundant despite the dire news and if we work together, organize and maintain pressure on our federal and state representatives to support decentralized power generation in rural Oregon and beyond our children can expect the same or better educational benefits of every other child in America.

Last year Dian Courtright and I observed Earth Hour at my home by turning off the lights and appliances for one hour and walking around Coquille to see who else might be making the gesture. This year in Alexandria, Virginia many lights went out and the nation’s Capitol did make an effort, as did other major cities around the world, to dim the lights and hold candle light vigils for our planet.

Pubs served drinks by votive candle and restaurants brought battery-powered lights into restaurants and drums beat softly amidst the cherry blossoms as I walked around the city. Hopefully, next year Coos County and Coquille will join the increasing number of communities each year that celebrate Earth Hour by turning off the lights.

Once again reliance upon a centralized grid system is being severely tested as an ice storm takes out power to 1.25 million homes and businesses. Small, manageable micro-grids would be so much more reliable.

More than half of New Hampshire’s homes and businesses lost power, and it was expected to take several days to completely restore electricity there and in other states. The storm wreaked havoc from Maine to Pennsylvania, leaving a sparkling, ice-covered landscape that was too destructive for many to find beautiful.

Once again the evidence that centralized power production is a colossal dinosaur is overwhelming. The intermittent nature of renewable energy which is manageable at a microgrid distributed level is highly problematic at the high voltage transmission level.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. says in a report scheduled for release Monday that unless appropriate measures are taken to improve transmission of electricity, rules reducing carbon dioxide emissions by utilities could impair the reliability of the power grid. The corporation is the industry body authorized by the U.S. government to enforce reliability rules for the interlocking system of electrical power generation and transmission.

Such carbon-reduction rules are already in place in 27 American states and four Canadian provinces, and new ones could be mandated nationally in both countries. They may force changes in the utility industry, the group said, including the shutting down of coal plants that are located near load centers, and substituting power from wind turbines or solar plants in remote areas.

These actions would impose new demands on a transmission system that was never designed for large power transfers over extremely long distances.

So why persist on flogging a dead iron horse? With the privatization of electrical production, an essential service, profit and the subsequent need to control the market mandates a centralized model. Presently, fewer than ten multinational corporations control the world’s electricity. Decentralizing wrests control from these corporate giants and significantly reduces dependence upon them as a supplier of essential needs.

Not to sound too trite but decentralizing puts the power into the hands of the people, literally and figuratively and even metaphorically.