The previous post presented a rather gloomy picture of the outlook for renewable energy, primarily solar. It is critical for the government to help bring this industry to the fore. It is myopic, barbaric and inexcusable to squander our soldiers and our legitimacy on the world stage fighting to protect the flow of oil. We should have evolved beyond this stage a long time ago. Oh, but some of us did. The oft-maligned Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House during his too-brief occupancy of that place, during the latter part of the 1970s. This was both a practical and a symbolic act which should have signaled America's awakening to the perils of over dependence on oil as the basic fuel of our economy. Thirty years down the line we could have built upon this humble commencement and found ourselves inhabiting a healthier planet with a more stable geo-political script.
One of the first acts of Carter's successor, however, was to pull the shades and go back to sleep. Reagan, upon moving into the White House, promptly removed the solar panels from the White House roof. This suggestion was possibly proffered by Nancy's astrologer, who felt the panels might cause interference with celestial transmissions needed to accurately guide the first lady. Whatever the reason, the symbolism was clear. We are addicted to oil and we love the petro-monkey on our backs. From time to time we spout good intentions, but little has come of it. Just one more teensy weensy mall on the outskirts of town, and maybe just a lttle subdivision off the interchange and then we'll give it up.
Way back, even before J.C. came on the scene, someone here in New Albany took steps to build a sustainable energy future. Doctor James Nolan built the Nolan Solar Building on State Street in 1973-4. If you look up to the Northwest corner of his building, you'll see the solar collectors for his heating system. Doc Nolan, with help from plumber friends and other tradesmen, more or less designed the system himself. It contains ten manufactured solar collectors which heat a closed loop containing a glycol and water solution. That solution, in turn, transfers heated air to a duct system, providing a majority of the space-heating needs of his roughly 10,000 square foot office building. He says that the solar system supplies about 2/3 of his heating. The shortfall is provided by a natural gas backup system.
Doc Nolan's system was almost not built. Contact lenses required a longer process, over a period of some weeks, for testing and fitting than is required today. I was a patient and was interested in the hopeful technology. As I sat in his office undergoing tests for the lenses (the office was in the Elsby Building), Dr. Nolan would tell me about this or that bit of progress he had made concerning his solar project. It unfolded over the series of tests. Finally, he ran into a brick wall which seemed to doom the project. He persevered, however, and came into contact with a scientist in California who supplied names of people who got the project back on track.
His project received some attention while it was still new. Today, the rather modest building's heat system has been functioning efficiently for over thirty years.
As a nation, we have largely wasted those years. We are content with the Co2-choked staus quo. Why? Is it because we have too much invested in our current system? Is the political process so compromised that the will of the people can't influence it, but oil mongers can? Locally we seem predestined to build two bridges. We excoriate those who favor the 8664 project. And we continue building out, out beyond services, out where land used to be productive, out where we can keep going out some more, for space between us and "them", out where the air is fresh. Call me a crank, call me atavistic, call me naive, but I don't get the sense that there's any out, out there.
So are we going to waste the next thirty years as Lennon said, living with eyes closed, misunderstanding all we see? Can we provide the spinal support necessary to move politicians toward sustainability at the local level? (I'm under the distinct impression that breathing occurs at the local level, by the way.) New Albany is a city well-positioned to take advantage of environmentally appropriate choices. We already know that solar heating works in this locale. We can revitalize the inner city to rein in sprawl. We can benefit from the investment our predecessors left us by enlivening the older neighborhoods. We can exhort. We can motivate. We can, as Doc Nolan did, lead by example. Or we can pull the shades and go back to sleep. Maybe we'll dream of the Gipper.
Doc Nolan is alive and well, and still tinkers with his solar dream. So, if you see him thank him for his efforts. He has been a shining example.
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5 comments:
John,
There are so many opportunities for our city to become more "green".
With the advancements in solar technology, as well as battery technology we could pretty easily (probably not cheaply though), switch the vast majority of traffic signals to solar/battery powered with live lines only as a back up system. With the widespread availability of LED lights, that use such little power to operate, that would make it even more feasible.
One added benefit to this, the fact if there is a power outage, the traffic lights would still function. I know the energy conservation would not have a massive impact on the over all plight we face, but if a pilot program in a small city like our was effective, perhaps the domino effect could take place. the impact of millions of traffic lights across the country would make a nice impact on energy usage.
But, I will not go into other things we could do to "green" up NA, as I would probably crash your blog!
From an article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., written before the current Iraq debacle. I've seen reference to the Rocky Mountain Institute study elsewhere as well.
In the late 1970's, President Jimmy Carter implemented CAFE standards to combat an oil shortage driven by policies of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The standards raised fuel efficiency in American cars by 7.6 miles a gallon over six years, causing oil imports from the Persian Gulf to fall by 87 percent. Our economy grew by 27 percent during that period. Detroit, predictably, figured out how to build more fuel-efficient cars largely without reductions in size, comfort or power.
The CAFE standards worked so well that they produced an oil glut by 1986. That's when the Reagan administration intervened to rescue America's domestic oil industry from gasoline price collapse. Ronald Reagan's rollback of CAFE standards caused America, in that year, to double oil imports from the Persian Gulf nations and to burn more oil than is in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
According to a recent report by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, if the United States had continued to conserve oil at the rate it did in the period from 1976 to 1985, it would no longer have needed Persian Gulf oil after 1985. Had we continued this wise course, we might not have had to fight the Persian Gulf war, and we would have insulated ourselves from price shocks in the international oil market. Fuel efficiency is a sound national energy policy, economic policy and foreign policy all wrapped into one. Every increase of one mile per gallon in auto fuel efficiency yields more oil than is in two Arctic National Wildlife Refuges. An improvement right now of 2.7 miles per gallon would eliminate our need for all Persian Gulf oil!
Yet the Republican Congress in 1995 made it illegal for the Environmental Protection Agency even to study higher CAFE standards. The result is that America now has the worst energy efficiency in 20 years.
csd619:
You are right to point out that forward progress can happen in small towns. Precisely because a town is small is one reason, not the only reason, that innovative technology like LED stoplights can be tried. Is it easier to do all of the stop lights in downtown N.A. or downtown Chicago?
New Albany is an ideal candidate to fashion itself as an environmental incubator, if we so choose.
Dr. Nolan's solar system works here, and that amazes some who think solar radiation on a par with Florida or California is required. In fact, one of the leaders in a different solar application, photovoltaic electricity, is a country few have as their first choice for a sunny spot--Germany.
bluegill:
Too bad Reagan saw fit to lend a hand to the invisible hand by caving in to his big money supporters from the oil patch. He could have, alternatively, steered us further along the course Carter set, with the result a domestic manufacturing sector that could have supplanted much of the oil industry. The problem with such an industrial revival is that it would have been a bottom-up model rather than a trickle down model. Why spread prosperity around when the wealthy are so much better equipped to deal with it?
Ok John, I didnt vote for you for the reasons only you and I know, but the fact is you will be on the city council so will you support a low impact development ordinance if it comes across the council chambers thereby holding developers finally accountable for the environmental damage they have done to New Albany for the last 20 years?
Tim Deatrick
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