Societal Actors and Dominant Smart Grid Visions - Smart Grid (R) Evolution: Electric Power Struggles - page 96

conservation, local health concerns,ortheenvironmental impact ofspecific projects. These
typesofdifferencescancreateconflictswithintheenvironmentalcommunity.Forexample,
the national organization may support the development of a large-scale solar project in the
desert, but the local chapter of the same organization might oppose the installation because
of the threat to endangered desert tortoise habitat.
For U.S. national-level environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), smart grid can help meet
environmental goals. For example, EDF's smart grid fact sheet presents a broad range
of smart grid promises: smart grid saves thousands of lives by reducing air pollution by
up to 30 percent, allows consumers to reduce utility bills with “set-and-forget” tools to
manage energy use, promotes economic growth and growth in clean energy jobs, provides
a more reliable electricity service with quicker recovery times, allows for more renewable
energy and less polluting fossil energy, and promotes electric vehicles (Environmental
Defense Fund 2013 ). For the NRDC smart grid holds similar promises, which will allow
it to advance its environmental and climate agenda by increasing energy efficiency and
conservation, integrating more renewables, reducing CO 2 emissions, and enabling the
use of electric plug-in vehicles (Succar and Cavanagh 2012 ) . These two environmental
organizations frame smart grid as a set of enabling technologies to help them meet their
larger goals. They also stress the importance of embedding environmental goals within
smart grid development. In addition to environmental goals, the organizations also
highlight some technical and social issues for smart grid development. They discuss the
need for open standards and technology neutrality to help avoid the risk of outdated
technology lock-in and the need for consumer engagement, putting education as a fully
funded priority, rather than a programmatic afterthought.
Smart grid has proven a more complicated issue for the Sierra Club. While the
organization has come out in support of renewable energy, local chapters, which retain a
great deal of autonomy, often remain divided on nearby projects and have been hostile
to the construction of new high-voltage transmission lines. The Sierra Club position
papers discuss the tradeoffs of smart grid and highlight the challenges of reconciling local
conservation and environmental priorities with the risks of climate change and energy
system transformation.
In the EU, environmental nongovernmental organizations such as Greenpeace and the
European Renewable Energy Council focus on smart grid to promote large-scale
renewables, energy efficiency, and demand-side management, as well as electric vehicles
(European Renewable Energy Council and Greenpeace 2010 ) . For Greenpeace this is
linked to their larger energy strategy, which focuses on shutting down coal and nuclear
plants and not including them in future energy systems. Greenpeace also advocates