Earlier this month, the City of San Antonio, TX, and CPS Energy released a report (available online ), outlining a plan to bring sustainable energy use to Alamo City, TX. The report was the result of a workshop facilitated by Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in the United States. In the report, Rifkin outlines what he calls the “Third Industrial Revolution” methodology—new, decentralized forms of energy that rest on four pillars:
• Renewable energy
• Buildings as positive power plants
• Hydrogen storage
• Smart grids/plug-in vehicles.
And while CPS Energy, a municipally owned power utility, plans on continuing its current system of centralized power facilities, the results of the report have convinced city and utility officials that the future of energy efficiency and sustainability lies in decentralized energy and onsite power systems (along with the ever-present promise of a national smart grid). CPS and the city are also aware that an bonus to increasing onsite power and renewable energy sources will be the ability offset carbon emissions—an important advantage in the face of the increasingly likely prospect of a national cap-and-trade policy.
Rifkin states in the report, “We need to envision a future in which millions of individuals can collect and produce locally generated renewable energy in their homes, offices, factories, and vehicles, store that energy in the form of hydrogen, and share their energy with each other across a continent-wide intelligent intergrid.”
So what do you think? Will power utilities abandon the centralized model of energy distribution? Does the future of onsite power and decentralized energy lie in the hands of the large utility, or will individual actors and private entities continue to hold sway?