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By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted August 21, 2010 at 12:21:14
It must be pointed out that power lines use about as much electricity in America as Agriculture (~7%). Because electricity generation is centralized (a conscious choice from the beginning by people like Edison to maximize monopoly profits), we lose massive amounts of energy pumping it along these lines. And then there's the steel, copper, land and other resources (often tons of pesticides) used by them. And the way that major power line infrastructure tends to be decided upon in a lot of the same ways highways are: in order to encourage development, rather than out of any actual need.
The most efficient way to generate power is as close to the user as possible. There's a myth journalists like to report on that we're "suddenly learning that large-scale renewables can be bad for the environment too".
Suddenly? Where were they during the Hydro Dam battles of the 1970s? Many environmentalists hate hydro dams almost as much as coal for what they do to rivers and landscapes.
What I'd like to see is small vertical turbines mounted on all our power lines and telephone poles. Or in areas where it's more suited, solar panels. Don't tell me these giant metal structures built into massive grass clearings don't already have great exposure. As for the VAWT mounts, they could pose these "guys"...have a "statue of liberty" model, a "King arthur" and perhaps even an "Olympic torch runner". Decentralized energy of one form or another is clearly the way of the future, and it would be a shame to let all this infrastructure go to waste.
"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford
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