Posted on 10/07/2008 11:20:08 PM PDT by neverdem
The presidential candidates claim to see America’s energy future, but their competing visions have a certain vintage quality. They’ve revived that classic debate: the hard path versus the soft path.
The soft path, as Amory Lovins defined it in the 1970s, is energy conservation and power from the sun, wind and plants — the technologies that Senator Barack Obama emphasizes in his plan to reduce greenhouse emissions. Senator John McCain is more enthusiastic about building nuclear power plants, the quintessential hard path.
As a rule, it’s not a good idea to revive anything from the 1970s. But this debate is the exception, and not just because the threat of global warming has raised the stakes. The old lessons are as good a guide as any to the future, as William Tucker argues in “Terrestrial Energy,” his history of the hard-soft debate.
The initial debate over nuclear power seemed to end not long after the partial meltdown in 1979 of the reactor at Three Mile Island. Utilities canceled orders and stopped building reactors, partly because of public fears, but perhaps mainly because of rising costs. Mr. Lovins and his allies liked to say that nuclear power, once promoted as “too cheap to meter,” had now become “too expensive to matter.”
The soft path seemed to be the way to go, particularly when some of Mr. Lovins’s predictions about energy conservation came true. As Americans cut back in response to higher prices and new incentives, the growth in electricity demand slowed. Some public officials, most enthusiastically in California, told utilities to stop building large power plants. Instead, they subsidized wind farms and solar power, which were supposed to be cheap and plentiful alternatives once the technologies matured.
Instead, they remained so costly and scarce that Californians’ electricity rates were among the highest...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How did this article get past the editors at the NYT? It actually makes some sense. (Not the bit about global warming and Gore.)
Aircraft carriers seem to enjoy great success with it, why can’t we do it like they do it?
I agree on the political side, but not totally from the energy side....
It was the 1970s that saw the large expansion of the electric supply with big robust and reliable coal burning power station. This included a large robust expansion of the power grid.
The 1970s saw the large expansion of nuclear power until TMI killed it. Rather than learning and benefiting from TMI, it was allowed to politically kill nuclear power.
These electric power projects allowed our economy to grow without worrying about electricity. Unfortunately, we have taken this energy generation, supply, and distribution system for granted and have allowed it to stagnate and decay.
The 1970s also saw large commercial expansion of domestic oil resources.
Yes, there are lessons to be learned from the 1970s. Some are bad, but there are many good lessons too.
Excellent post.
We take so much for granted in our (currently) reliable electric generating and distribution infrastructure.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.