Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
A
New York Times Magazine
writer who came to Sungevity in early 2012 to tour the
office and find out what we were up to admitted that he knew nothing of the energy
industry and was shocked to learn how competitive solar power had become. What he
found out from his visit was so different from what he'd read in articles, from pieces in
the
Washington Times
to
Wired,
about the ease and the affordability of going solar. At
least this gentleman was trying to get to the truth.
Theignoranceofmostjournalistsandtheirlackofenergypoliticsandpolicycoverage
arethelessimpressivepartsoftheirrecenthistory.Someofthisignoranceisunderstand-
able, given the level of propaganda we're all exposed to by the fossil-fuel industry. It's
the gullibility with which they write up current history that gets me going.
Alec Guettel, one of my Sungevity partners, handles this issue well when briefing
politicians and pundits. He points to the graph presented in
chapter 1
that compares the
historic price of grid electricity—predominantly supplied with fossil-fuel power—with
the price of solar power. The graph shows electricity from the grid going up for more
than a century as the price of solar declines precipitously from the middle of the timeline
when it was invented. Alec then asks what the misunderstanding is. “I don't want to in-
sult your critical thinking,” he says, “but the fossil-fuel and utility industries represented
by that line of growing revenues are among the richest and most profitable companies in
history. Literally—in the history of the world. They have a lot of money to spend. And
they don't like the look of this graph. And that's why they're generating a large amount
of flak and deception.”
Ol' King CONG has been threatened by these curves because the writing is on the
wall; solar will become the lowest-cost source of electricity, and then CONG will have
to resist market forces to maintain its thrall over electricity consumers and their money.
They're using fear, uncertainty, and doubt as a form of procrastination. As the French
wag Henri Queuille said, “Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no
longer relevant.” King CONG is trying to play waiting-game politics with our energy
choices, but clean energy matters too much, and when there's so much at stake these
choices will become more relevant every day.
And why should we wait? Solar adoption is upon us because of the true viability of
thetechnologyandpeople'sgrowingenthusiasm forit.Withproductslikethesolarlease
in the residential sector and other easy pay-as-you-go ways to tap the power of the sun,
we're on the verge of the Solar Ascent.
10 Reasons Why the Solar Ascent Is Inevitable
To wrap it up, here are the 10 key reasons why I believe we're about to get our time in
the sun.
