Solar Energy

Pulling up the Shades and Letting the Sun in

S. David Freeman
General Manager
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
USA
Historians in the future may wonder why this high-energy civilization of ours failed to pursue the
obvious. They may wonder why the scientists and technicians chose to drill into the depths of the
earth, split the atom, ravage so much of the earth and foul the air rather than concentrate on harnessing
the solar power that is delivered free of charge to the earths surface.
The answer may be that modern civilization is so smart that it is dumb. We choose to pursue the most
technologically challenging path, such as the decades-long and unsuccessful effort to perfect fusion
power, rather than capturing the solar power that reaches the roofs of our homes without any effort by
mankind. We seem to want to keep climbing technological Mt. Everests rather than doing the much
simpler engineering needed to put to use the solar energy that nature provides.
I can remember a Congressional hearing in the 1960s when a Senator Aiken from Vermont in the
Northeast United States, bemoaning the shenanigans of the oil industry, commented: We have a very
excellent solar energy device in Vermont its called the window shade. We pull up the shade and in
comes the sun.
The question facing America and the rest of the world today remains the same as it has been for years:
When are we going to remove our own blinders on solar energy? When are we going to pull up the
window shade, and let the sun come in?
In order to achieve the solar breakthrough which I believe is crucial to the survival of our high-energy
civilization, we need to understand why those blinders are still down.
Energy policy the world over is dominated by the oil industry. We must also recognize that the
petroleum interests are reinforced by the vested interest of the automobile companies that sell products
that run on petroleum.
The oil industry is by no means alone in dominating energy policy. The coal industry is a powerful
lobby. Nuclear power too, has a powerful constituency, ranging from colleges and universities that
benefit from the research funding, to the manufacturers, who profit from prematurely marketing a
product that requires expensive upgrades and repairs. The electric utilities also constitute a powerful
lobby in favor of existing energy sources.
But the fossil fuels and nuclear power industries no longer have a monopoly on energy policy. Now,
there are major lobbying interests on the side of the environment. But the environmental movement
has been fighting brush fires, so to speak, attempting to deal with the symptoms. The focus has been
defensive, fighting pollution caused by drilling for oil, mining for coal, burning huge quantities of
fossil fuels, trying to prevent nuclear meltdowns and cleaning vast quantities of radioactive materials
buried in various parts of the globe.
The environmental community, while making some strides in the 1990s, has not really had an
opportunity to get at the root of the problem by focusing attention on an alternative source of energy.
Solar power has just simply fallen between the cracks.
Solar Energy: Pulling up the Shades and Letting the Sun in Freeman.
Renewable Energy Transforming Business Keynote Paper 44
There was a good beginning in the developing solar power in the United States in the late 1970s
during the administration of President Jimmy Carter. But the solar R&D effort virtually ended when
Carter left office. Its no exaggeration to state that in the 1980s, under President Ronald Reagan, the
administration came awfully close to declaring war on the sun. The fundraising for solar research and
development stopped. The solar tax credits were allowed to lapse and they actually took down the
solar collector that Jimmy Carter put on the roof of the White House.
Except for a small band of survivors, the United States solar effort came to a standstill and worldwide
the situation was not much better. But there were survivors. Thankfully so.
The 1990s, through a combination of utility initiatives and burgeoning green interests, sparked
renewed attentions in alternative energies, including solar. One program embraced by my agency, the
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, allowed commercial customers the option of paying a
small premium for green power, renewable power supplied by solar- or wind-powered generation
facilities. We now have almost 60,000 customers signed up for green power.
A parallel program provides a subsidy of up to $10,000 for solar panels built and installed in
Los Angeles. On sunny days, in fact, the electrical meter runs backward, erasing the evenings power
charges. To showcase the power of the sun in a bigger way, the DWP in August of this year installed
solar panels on the Los Angeles Convention Center to generate 1.5 megawatts of energy and help
power the 2000 Democratic National Convention.
But programs such as ours in Los Angeles are but small footprints on a vast expanse. Solar power in
Los Angeles is still used mostly for tanning, not for electricity or producing hot water.
As we move into the new millennium, we find ourselves at a major crossroads in the future of
alternative energies. Oil and gas prices are skyrocketing. Conflict in the Middle East continues to
destabilize the politics of crude. And the publics fancy for sport utility vehicles (SUVs) have reversed
fuel efficiency gains. We are back in a full-fledged energy crisis. This gives us a new opportunity
perhaps a last clear chance to embrace the rewards of alternative energies and conservation and
reduced demand.
The citizens of the world face economic hardships from the price of petroleum and environmental
catastrophe as global warming steadily causes more and more damage to the earth and its people.
Solar power in all its forms must form an alliance with energy efficiency. Together the economies are
better and solar can capture a large market share sooner. Renewable clean energy is too precious to
waste. Solar energy, used efficiently, is the product that can sell.
Solar technology is a here and now option. To be sure, there are people gathering here in Australia for
this conference who know better than I that photovoltaic cells and solar-thermal power plants can
become much more economical to manufacture and run. The serious question is whether the solar
option will be commercialized on a wide scale, as was the T-model Ford. There can be tremendous
improvement in the future, but not if solar power remains a novelty.
We must face the reality that solar power is still in its infancy. Despite all of the progress we see as
solar people talking to each other, solar power is not a reality for the energy guzzling world. The
reality is that the total production of solar power on the entire planet is about 100 MW, an amount so
much smaller to be than 1% as to be de minimus in meeting the needs of 6 billion people, a third of
whom are currently without electricity altogether.
There have been tremendous technical advancements in the last 25 years. Electricity from
photovoltaic cells can be produced at costs that are not too much higher than peaking power from
conventional sources. It is also true that solar power is no longer rejected with the same sneering,
dismissive attitude as it was 25 years ago.
Solar Energy: Pulling up the Shades and Letting the Sun in Freeman.
Renewable Energy Transforming Business Keynote Paper 45
But let us not dilude ourselves. While solar power may be getting better music, the action is still
going to the fossil fuels, and the build up of carbon and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
continues at alarming rates. Despite scattered subsidy programs here and there, the old fashioned
sources of energy are doing the business and the window shades are still down the sun has yet to
penetrate the house of energy.
The question this conference must address is what to do about it.
First of all, the solar industry must collectively get its noses out of the laboratory and begin seriously
to promote and market its product at the retail level. I know of no place on earth where the solar
option has reached the general public through a hard-hitting marketing program which includes
television advertising and the other ingredients that are essential to selling any product. The
consumers of the world simply do not know about the vast array of solar technologies that are
currently available because the technologies are not being offered to them in the manner used by
people selling automobiles, homes, appliances, and computers. Frankly, we are talking to ourselves,
patting ourselves on our respective backs for the wonderful accomplishments in the laboratory, but the
solar industry has no marketing effort worthy of the name.
We continue to compare a solar module that can be incorporated in the roof of homes with a central
station power plant and forget that the values are not comparable: people buy all sorts of things for
their homes not based upon price. The solar roof could and should be as popular in any 21
st
century
home as a marble bathroom or other items for which people routinely spend thousands of dollars if
incorporated in the mortgage.
The marketing effort of course must address the serious reasons why people should choose solar
power, and with all due respect, neither the solar industry as a whole or individual companies have yet
to articulate those reasons in plain English, plain Spanish, or even plain French or German. And
certainly this message has not been translated into Chinese.
The message is clear as the world enters into a new energy crisis.
(1) Nuclear power has proven to be an economic failure. It was advertised to people as too cheap to
meter, it turns out to be too expensive to use.
(2) Coal is so rich in carbon that its continued large-scale use endangers the very high-energy
civilization that coal is powering. And as the globe gets warmer, it creates an even greater
demand for energy to keep it cool and thus we are in death spiral of major proportions.
(3) Petroleum is now so scarce that its cost is reaping havoc with the economies of the non-oil
producing developing nations and it is hurting much of the rest of the worlds economy. Perhaps
of greater concern is that the dependence of United States and others on oil from the volatile
Middle East threatens world peace. But worse of all, the burning of all that oil not only causes
local air pollution but joins with coal in causing global warming.
Solar power, in all of its forms used efficiently, provides by far the most technically advanced and
widespread alternative to the energy-environmental crisis this planet now faces.
A major marketing effort by the solar industry that incorporates todays energy realities is essential.
But I will concede that industry marketing alone is insufficient. It must be supplemented by
governmental programs that recognize that market forces do not reflect the cost to society of burning
fossil fuels and nuclear and cannot give society the right answer. It may sound trite, but the harsh
truth is that on a discounted cash flow basis the world is not worth saving. The market place simply
does not reflect the externalities (which itself is a fraudulent slip by the economists) the
environmental, national security, and economic costs of the dominant sources of energy.
Solar Energy: Pulling up the Shades and Letting the Sun in Freeman.
Renewable Energy Transforming Business Keynote Paper 46
The public policy options can be lumped into two major categories. We either add the cost of these
externalities to the fossil fuels and nuclear power in the form of taxes, or we provide financial
incentives or direct mandates requiring that efficiently used solar power become a large and larger part
of the energy mix. For 25 years, I have joined a chorus of people who suggest that pollution taxes will
provide the correct market signals. We must face the fact that the political process in the United States
will not enact suggested pollution taxes to enable market prices to reflect societys values. And we
must have a solution that is both theoretically sound and politically viable.
Therefore, it seems to me that in addition to the major solar industry marketing effort, we need to be
advocating governmental policies that will provide sufficient subsidies to enable the solar option to
become affordable or mandates that require solar power be incorporated in all new buildings, in all
new roofs, and a growing fraction of all new power supply. And we need to require that a growing
percentage of new automobiles be solar-electric.
Of course, the enactment of such laws will itself require a major marketing effort but that effort must
be undertaken and undertaken with strength of purpose.
The day has come when the domination of energy scene by petroleum needs to end. The day has
come when we must begin to pull up our blinds and let the sun come in.
A good place to start would be with the two billion people of this earth that have no electricity. For
them a small solar module with a battery is not only economical compared to what they pay for
kerosene but also it would dramatically change their lives for the better. It would enable them in time
to become a part of the new computer civilization. They could sell their handmade goods on the
Internet and become consumers themselves.
If we are to balance worldwide energy supply and demand in the decades ahead without going to war
or destroying our economy and environment, we must face the imperative that Edmund Burke stated
almost two centuries ago when he wrote: The public interest requires doing today those things that
men of intelligence and goodwill would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done.
Yes my friends, there is life after oil and it can be a better life. Lets put it to life.