I still remember the first time I drove out to
Palm Springs and got a first hand glimpse of wind power at work – there, where
interstate 10 cuts a black stripe through the desert, whirring without pause, turbines seemingly
synchronized to dance with the wind, were the windmills of the San Gorgonio Mountain Pass in the San
Bernardino Mountains where more than 4000 separate windmills provide enough
electricity to power Palm Springs and the entire Coachella Valley.
It was hard not to stare, never before had I seen energy in action. Like many a layman, I was awed by what
appeared to me to be an overwhelming show of the strength and value of renewable
energy. It was beautiful really,
white sentries lined up one by one across a parched and desolate landscape. Of course that was years ago, before
commercial buildings and housing developments rimmed that desert corridor, and
before we started to look at the ramifications of big energy buildout on public
lands.
It’s clear that large-scale energy projects
impact the land and the communities surrounding those lands, and although the
extent of that impact may be debatable (especially when measured against the
greater good of fostering alternative, renewable resources) it makes sense to
look at other alternatives that would allow for the use of alternative energy
without the need to adversely impact our wild spaces.
Take Germany for example. Thanks to The German electricity feed law that pays
homeowners and businesses for their solar electricity, and the country’s low
interest loan program that makes it possible for anyone to install solar,
rooftop solar installations cost virtually nothing. And those incentives add up: due to
the rooftop solar energy production is
in line to produce 10 gigawatts of rooftop solar by 2011 (compared to
California’s goal of 20 gigawatts by 2020). Since 1993, when the program began,
thousands of rooftop systems (using photovoltaic) have been placed on existing
surfaces: rooftops, parking garages, warehouses, and schools. With millions of square feet of
available roof space available in the US, the obvious question is, “why aren’t
we using it?”
Makes you wonder, too, about the belief that
any kind of solar is better than no solar at all – could it be that there’s a
right way and a wrong way to utilize renewable energy?