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A smart grid, yes. A new national grid, no.

The new mantra in energy circles is "national smart grid."

In the New York Times, Al Gore insists the new president should give the highest priority to "the planning and construction of a unified national smart grid." President Barack Obama, responding to a question by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, declares that one of "the most important infrastructure projects that we need is a whole new electricity grid ... a smart grid."

We lump together the two words, "national" and "smart" as if they were joined at the hip, but in fact each describes and enables a very different electricity future. The word "national" in these discussions refers to the construction of tens of thousands of miles of new national ultra-high-voltage transmission lines, an initiative that would further separate power plants from consumers, and those who make the electricity decisions from those who feel the impact of those decisions.

The word "smart," on the other hand, refers to upgrading the existing network to make it more resilient and efficient. A smart grid can decentralize both generation and authority. Sophisticated electronic sensors, wireless communication, software and ever-more powerful computers will connect electricity customers and suppliers in real time, making possible a future in which tens of millions of households and businesses actively interact with the electricity network as both consumers and producers.

Advocates of a new national ultra-high-voltage transmission network offer three main arguments:

1. New high-voltage transmission lines are needed to decrease electric grid congestion and therefore increase reliability and security.

There is indeed congestion on some parts of our distribution and transmission networks. Congestion reveals a problem; it doesn't demand a specific solution. It can be addressed by reducing demand through increasing energy efficiency or by increasing on-site or local energy production. Both strategies are often less costly and quicker to implement than building new transmission lines. An analogy from the solid-waste sector may be appropriate. Exhausting nearby landfills does not inevitably require us to send our garbage to new and more distant landfills. We can emphasize recycling, composting, scrap-based manufacturing and reuse.

2. A new national high-voltage transmission network is necessary to dramatically increase renewable energy.

President Obama wants to build new transmission lines because, "I want to be able to get wind power from North Dakota to population centers, like Chicago." Writing in Vanity Fair, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants a new high-voltage transmission system to "deliver solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable energy across the country."

But do we really need to deliver renewable energy across the country? The distinguishing characteristic of renewable energy is its availability in abundant quantities virtually everywhere.

Washington new center of global warming battle

WASHINGTON — European ministers are flocking to Washington drawn by the new administration’s pledge to help lead the fight against climate change, an issue largely put on ice for eight years here. Ministers from across Europe as well as Canada are taking part in a whirl of meetings here this week to gauge prospects of […]

What's the alternative?

Fossil fuel energy prices are down right now due to the recession suppressing demand, but the mid- and long-term trend is up. Coal, oil, natural gas -- all up. If we do nothing, energy will keep getting more expensive for Americans, and it will impact the poor disproportionately.

The progressive proposal is to price carbon, strengthen efficiency regulations, and invest in green energy and infrastructure. This will produce a short-term rise in energy prices followed by a mid- and long-term stabilization and reduction as renewables and efficiency scale up.

Conservatives react with outrage to the notion of policy that will produce an increase in energy prices, of any duration.

But ... what's their alternative? Energy prices are going up regardless. What's their solution to that problem?

I sincerely don't understand. Someone explain it to me.

Los Angelenos narrowly reject city-wide solar plan

Los Angeles voters yesterday rejected the Green Energy Good Jobs ballot initiative (AKA Measure B), according unofficial results from the city clerk’s office. The plan, which failed by about 1,000 votes, would have led to the installation of thousands of solar panels on rooftops and parking lots throughout the city. It would have required the […]

Greenhouse-gas emissions continue to grow in the U.S.

Shocker! In the absence of a national program to cap and reduce the amount of planet-warming gases we’re pumping into the atmosphere, U.S. emissions continued to grow in 2007. The country’s overall emissions increased 1.4 percent that year, with the majority of that increase coming from fuel and electricity consumption, according to a new draft […]

As reservoirs fall, water prices should rise

Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency and warned of possible mandatory water rationing as the state struggled through its third consecutive year of drought. This well-intentioned response to the latest water crisis should not come as a surprise.

Whenever prolonged droughts take place -- anywhere in the United States -- public officials can be expected to give impassioned speeches, declare emergencies, and impose mandatory restrictions on water use. Citizens are frequently prohibited from watering lawns, and businesses are told to prepare emergency plans to cut their usage. A day after the restrictions are announced, the granting of special exemptions typically begins (as in Maryland a few years ago, when car washes were allowed to remain open even if they were not meeting conservation requirements).

The droughts eventually pass, and when they do, water users go back to business as usual, treating water as if it were not a scarce resource. Water conservation efforts become a thing of the past, until the next drought, until the next unnecessary crisis. Isn't there a better way?

There are two ways of improving the electrical grid, each with its own politics and challenges

Two years ago, nobody was talking about the nation's electricity grid; today it's so prominent in the national conversation that Barack Obama mentioned it in his inauguration speech. For energy wonk types, it's pretty amazing.

Lots of politicians and pundits are sort of waving their hands toward the grid as an energy solution, without being very specific about their goals or the policies needed to get there. To add some clarity, it's worth distinguishing two distinct grid issues, each with its own technological challenges, regulatory issues, and political implications.

To simplify matters, think of the grid like the nation's waterways. There are a few big, primary rivers -- the high-voltage, long-distance lines that compose the transmission system. Then there are thousands and thousands of smaller tributaries -- the lower voltage lines that carry electricity from the transmission system to individual homes and businesses, called the distribution system. (I guess the homes and businesses are ... lakes? Ponds? Frankly I haven't thought the metaphor through that far.)

With that distinction in mind, we can discern two grid-related subjects of interest to energy/enviro types:

The National Grid

This has to do with extending the transmission system to address two problems:

• First, there aren't many high-voltage lines that go to the places where renewable energy is most abundant (e.g., the Southwest for solar, the Midwest for wind).

• Second, right now there are (depending on how you count) anywhere from three to seven distinct regional grids that make up the national grid, and they aren't very well connected. While juice circulates relatively freely within these grids, it's difficult to get juice from one grid to another.

The wide grid refers to the effort to build a truly national transmission system: a new high-voltage backbone, with lines spanning the length and breadth of the country, able to carry electricity from anywhere it's generated to anywhere it's needed. Wide grid advocates argue that linking the entire nation together would mitigate the problem of intermittency -- the fact that sun and wind are variable (as opposed to baseload sources that can be turned on and off at will). The more intermittent energy sources are linked together, the more stable and reliable the whole system becomes.

Lessons from cognitive dissonance theory for U.S. environmentalists

If we accept the worst, or precautionary assessment, then U.S. environmentalists have perhaps a year to avert cataclysm, and nothing we are doing now will work. We are dealing with this terrible situation in a very ordinary and human way: by denying it.

Our denial comes in a variety of forms: we believe that President Obama can and will solve the problem; we ignore Jim Hansen's assessment and timeline; we concentrate on our jobs and organization agendas and pass over the big picture; we focus on the molehill of climate policy rather than tackle the mountain of climate politics; we assess our efforts by looking back on how far we have come and do not measure the distance still to be traveled; we scrupulously avoid criticizing each other, lacking conviction in our own courses of action and not wishing to invite criticism in turn; and we are irrationally committed to antique approaches that are self-evidently inadequate.

In our hearts we know that what we are doing is futile, but we do not know what else we should or could be doing. The constraints within which we work feel so intractable and out of human scale that we cannot imagine how to break them. Despite our best efforts, Americans just don't seem to get it or they don't care, and we are at a loss to explain this. Unable to influence our own nation, we are further dismayed by the far vaster challenge of altering the trajectory of China, India, Brazil, and the rest of the world.

Nothing we now confront should be a surprise. We have known for more than thirty years that the world was bound to reach this state (with twenty years specific warning on climate). The purpose of environmentalism was to alter the self-destructive parabola of growth by introducing new values and sensibilities, which, as has been clear for some time, we have manifestly failed to do.

We are the ones who warned the world what was to come and we are the custodians of the only true solution, yet our current best ideas amount to no more than fiddling with the dials of corporate capitalism (cap-and-trade) and gussying up environmental policy as one item on the domestic progressive agenda (green jobs).

We do not seem capable of taking even the most elementary steps to extricate ourselves from the trap in which we find ourselves. Why, for example, have we never convened a general conference of environmental leadership to consider what to do, or formed an association bigger than the sum of our parts? Why do we not spend some of the billions in our control to experiment with new approaches and campaigning (or support those already doing so)? Why is there no internal debate or discussion other than a quarrelsome wrangling over the minutia of policy?

Alice Waters' move into the political sphere is hitting some bumps

I'm hesitant to step in the middle of any debate over Alice Waters' contributions to food policy. But suffice it to say that, as she moves more and more aggressively into politics, she is taking some hits. Ezra Klein sums up the Alice Waters paradox this way:

Good food -- the sort Waters features at her restaurant -- is considered a luxury of the rich rather than a social justice issue. As Waters frequently argues, no one is worse served by our current food policy than a low-income family using food stamps to purchase rotted produce at the marked-up convenience store. Her vision is classically populist: It democratizes the concrete advantages -- health, pleasure, nutrition -- that our current food system gives mainly to the wealthy. But her language is suffused with the values and the symbols of, well, the sort of people who already eat at Waters' restaurant. Thus, in promoting an agenda that benefits poor people with little access to fresh food, Waters tends to communicate mainly with rich people interested in fine dining.

She's been fighting the elitist tag for some time -- as well as a reputation for being a bit, well, overbearing. According to a recent article in Gourmet, she overwhelmed even former President Clinton years ago with her passion over a White House vegetable garden. After receiving a letter from the Clintons suggesting that a front-lawn vegetable garden wasn't in keeping with the formal landscaping of the White House, Waters couldn't restrain herself:

[S]he fired off another letter. Apologizing for "being so insistent," she begged to differ, reminding him that "L'Enfant's original plan for the capital city was inspired by the layout of Versailles, and at Versailles the royal kitchen garden is itself a national monument: historically accurate, productive, and breathtakingly beautiful throughout the year."

It was the end of their correspondence.

Ouch. And the Obamas, while unfailingly polite in person, have so far resisted Waters' attempts to be pulled into their circle of informal advisors. Having nothing to do with Waters, it's well-known that hobnobbing with aesthetes can be dangerous to your electoral prospects and the fact remains that Waters is, at heart, just that.

Join new climate-action Facebook application, win rewards

If you haven't already heard, Grist is tickled to be the editorial sponsor of Hot Dish, a climate change news-'n'-activism Facebook app that has all the cool kids talking. It's the brainchild of online social media and news aggregator NewsCloud, made possible by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. (Yours truly even had a hand in it.) Hot Dish is where online news meets real-world action to fight climate change.

Grist helps drive the conversation around the day's top climate change news, and Hot Dish enables users to share it with each other within the comfy confines of Facebook. But wait -- there's more! Users can join the Action Team to complete challenges and earn points by, say, writing to a congressperson, setting up composting, or volunteering with an environmental group.