Environmental Engineering Reference
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I worked with a helicopter pilot who dropped live chickens in nets to the miners, who
groped at the air below us to catch them for their dinner.
Not all of the region's people believed in the promise of BP and all this magic that
“business” was going to bring to the place. One night I was taken up to a spot overlook-
ingtheentireTariValley,closetowheretheHidesgasfieldswere,toseeBP'smachinery
roaring, dinosaur-like. There was an ancient myth among the local Huli people that a
great snake had long ago gone into hibernation beneath the land, and when the monster
finally woke and its eyes burned into the night, the end of the world was near. “Look,”
said one old man over the din, pointing to two searing points of light from the construc-
tion area, where heaps of land had been overturned, “the eyes of the snake!”
The hope for electricity was false. The gas pumped out of the ground wasn't the kind
that generated electricity in a place like this; instead it was sucked away down a pipe.
The people remained in the dark, except for the two bright lights in the night up on the
hill at Hides.
These folks deserved better. They deserved electricity service, no doubt, and all the
benefitsitbrings.Buttheydidn'tdeservethedespoliationoftheirsacredhomeforfossil-
fuel extraction, which not only wouldn't benefit them but would destroy their lifestyle. I
remember looking up and feeling the sun's heat blanketing the Earth, so much of it that
in a single hour it could fuel the Huli people's energy needs for a century. Thus my love
affair with the sun began.
Two decades later I'm half a world away from Papua New Guinea. I'm now an entre-
preneur in the center of the entrepreneurial universe—the San Francisco Bay Area—but
I'mstillinlovewiththesunandallthepeoplewholiveunderit,andI'mmoreconfident
than ever that the sun's power will win over Dirty Energy. Why?
Let's look into my crystal ball (solar powered, of course) and take a glimpse into the
future.Inthenextdecade,ourworldisgoingtoseeamassiveincrease inelectricity gen-
eration, about 50 percent more than we have today, according to most forecasts (from
the International Energy Agency's to Greenpeace's) and depending on how much of our
vehicle fleet moves toward electrification. A small part of this new electricity generation
will be to replace retired plants, but most of it will be an entirely new power infrastruc-
ture to meet the needs of the economically developing world. The United States itself
will re-up more than 25 percent of the electricity-generating capacity for its own needs
in the coming decade, while China will add 300 percent as much to its.
If we use coal to fuel this ramp-up, we're all cooked—figuratively and literally. It's
simplecarbonlogic:ifthatmuchcoalisdugupandburnedtomeetourever-growingen-
ergyappetite,thecarbondioxideproducedwillraisethetemperatureoftheEarthbeyond
safe levels. We can avert some of this fate by covering our buildings with solar panels.
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