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Also in Renewable Energy

Who Owns the Sun?

People, Politics, and the Struggle for a Solar Economy

by Daniel M. Berman, John T. O'Connor

Reviews

The dense text and copious notes of this jointly-authored book will make reading slow and laborious, but the narrative is so absorbing that a quiet house and a cup of coffee will take the reader into a space that could easily make a series of spy thriller movies. One of the great things about democracies is the fact that all sorts of folks are allowed to express their views, and this book is proof of that. The lengthy notes in the appendix starting on page 246 are a reminder that one generation is all that separates undocumented memories of events from extinction.

Anyone doing research on the environmental movement in America would find a wealth of information in this appendix, not to mention the actual text. The focus, as pointed out in the title, is on the business and politics of renewable energy. On page xiii in the Introduction is the statement that "Our primary thesis is that local ownership and democratic control of energy are the necessary, if not sufficient, conditions for a solar economy."

Chapter 1, titled "Solar America: A Dream Deferred" starts with the 1970's and dreams of Americans who wanted good, practical solar solutions to energy problems. Whether home-made power, or utility-funded Electric Power Research Institute, lots of Americans wanted to use the sun, which is there for anyone who gets its light. "Yet even though solar hot water and wind energy programs had constituted one of the most successful environmental conversion programs in U.S. history, by the mid-1980s these programs were moribund." (p.10)

Chapter 2, "Keeping Solar Culture Alive", describes in easy-to-understand detail the development of various solar water heaters around the turn of the century in places like southern California and Florida. Yet today's sunbelt dwellers rarely use solar water heating, probably because of the comparatively high initial cost of installation of solar water heating. Utilities strongly discourage the use of them, and banks are not eager to finance them, even though more than two-thirds of current Floridians using solar water heating are very pleased with them. Discussed are details from Florida, Hawaii, and California, as well as the shift of various solar applications from mainstream to underground. "The Bank of Willits in Mendocino County (ed.: California) is one of the few banks in the United States to grant building loans for 100-percent solar homes..." (p.39). John Schaeffer, founder of Real Goods, says "the commitment to solar is a way to resist the 'death culture' of cities, television, and government...." (p.41). On page 42, the authors state that "firms like Alternative Energy Engineering and Real Goods ...prove that solar works in everyday life and that it is still possible to reduce electricity consumption by one-half or three-quarters and still live comfortably."

Comparing a fossil-fuel civilization to "a dinosaur devouring its own tail: it will eat itself to death; the only question is when." (p. 64), this chapter spells out the century-old battles controlled by oil. This is one issue most people would like to ignore. Oil was initially used primarily as kerosene, but Rockefeller's entry into the refining market and Henry Ford's mass-produced Model T automobile started a whole new lifestyle. 1913 initiated the "oil depletion allowance" and the American war for oil was on. Small producers in east Texas lost their shirts when the Big Three oil companies drove them out of business. They responded by guerrilla warfare against the big oil companies, and the National Guard and Texas Rangers rode in to quell the uprising. The Middle East military intervention, the "Gulf War", was compared to the east Texas uprising by the authors, who quoted the Wall Street Journal, Nov. 7, 1994: "Saudi Arabia has paid more than half of the $600 million cost of last month's U.S.-led military deployment in the Persian Gulf, Arab diplomats in Riyadh said. The diplomats said the Saudis made a $330 million payment to the U.S. Kuwait is believed to be paying about 40% of the cost." The rest of the chapter is a fascinating story of the history of the petroleum industry. Likely, there will be countering stories from the oil industry. The potential of natural gas as a means of bridging the present economy to a solar economy is discussed here too.

"The further that public power entities stray from democratic control, the greater the temptation for abuses." So ends chapter 4. There are two types of utility companies, or power providers: municipal utilities and "investor-owned" (or private) utilities. This seems innocuous enough, until you consider the difference. A municipal utility, such as Sacramento Municipal utility District, belongs to the people who live in the district, and is controlled by them. An investor-owned utility belongs to anyone in the world who has enough money to buy into the utility and they will make the decisions about it, and those decisions usually have to do with what will make the most money, not what is best for the people in the service district. Municipal utilities were, for the most part, started in the late 19th century and early 20th century as a reaction to the abuses in all sorts of services: railroads, trolleys, utilities and insurance companies.

This chapter discusses some of the historical figures and entities to come out of the last century: Insull and Edison, FDR and the Tennessee Valley Authority, Hetch Hetchy and the public power movement in San Francisco (Muir and the Sierra Club fought bitterly the building of the dam in the middle of Yosemite Valley), and SMUD. The Sacramento Municipal Utility (SMUD), started by the McClatchy family, was a nuclear power enthusiast but also did such constructive things as helping finance tree plantings, installation of solar water heaters, and building of Solar Advantage Houses.

Questions about ownership of photovoltaic installations are discussed in chapter 7, titled "Solar Homesteaders or Solar Sharecroppers?" where the problems of usage crop up. If utilities develop photovoltaics, and they install them on homes, who owns the power? It becomes very complex. We assume that the person paying for the installation of a product owns it, but when power production comes into the picture, and the power is fed back into the grid, who should call the shots? Southern California Edison has three stipulations: the government and ratepayers must pay for renewable energy R&D, Edison must meter the current and charge a lot less for "net excess power" (the power beyond whatever the owner uses) than the customers pay them, and photovoltaics and wind power must be used mainly to supplement, not replace, peak demand. (page 179) The health, safety and toxicity of waste involved in the manufacture of photovoltaics are often forgotten by enthusiasts, and this is also discussed here.

Also discussed in this chapter are the poor countries who are the most obvious ones to benefit from renewable energy sources. Will there be ways to encourage the development and manufacture of renewables in poor countries, or must they indenture themselves to the richer countries in order to have access to solar and wind power? Off-grid applications in poor countries often make the difference between literacy, health and marketable products, and not having them.

Is the book true? Is it balanced? It certainly is well-documented. Only the readers can properly evaluate the book, which should be a jump-start for lively discussions all over the United States.

Review Authored by Marge Wood, a reviewer for "Energy Magazine," published by Business Communications Company, Incorporated, 25 Van Zant Street, Norwalk, Connecticut 06855; Telephone: 203/853-4266