When we compare energy sources, we tend to speak in dollar amounts – how clean energy will or won’t compete with the price of gas, how solar compares to wind, how much an EV will or won’t save us. When we ask ourselves which energy source is better, we often just mean which is cheaper. Today, though, the question we should be asking ourselves is no longer about price alone but instead: Can we rely on a given source at all? Keep up with my latest writing In 1975, Edward Abbey wrote a very funny – and very smart – book about environmental criminals who attempt to defend the natural world by destroying the machines that would doze and develop it. They blow up bulldozers, set fire to billboards and bridges, and do whatever they can to evade law enforcement and impede construction – all in the name of environmental protection, of preserving the pristine wilderness of the American southwest. Today’s version of The Monkey Wrench Gang has no such high-minded eco-ideals. The Iranian government just wants to stick it to Donald Trump. But, deliberately or not, they are making the same point as Abbey’s eco-criminals: Your economic progress is not safe. We can blow it up whenever we want. Conventional wisdom has long held that major powers could protect centralized infrastructure and global supply routes, but as drone technology has advanced, so too have the threats to the energy infrastructure we’ve long taken for granted. Drones have changed the strategic calculation because they are cheap, widely available, and difficult and expensive to defend against. That threat applies most directly to oil ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, but it applies to oilfields, pipelines, and refineries just as well. Drones make them all vulnerable to attacks, as we’ve seen across Russia and Ukraine. And Ukraine and Russia are demonstrating a larger national-security problem with centralized, fossil-fuel-dependent energy systems. If your country depends on a relatively small number of pipelines, refineries, fuel depots, shipping routes, or foreign suppliers, you have created choke points. All an enemy needs to do is hit or control these vulnerabilities to upend your entire energy system. We should not recreate an energy system where another country, or even a relatively small number of determined actors, can hold an entire economy up. What does this mean? It’s another argument for distributed renewable energy – one that leaders globally should heed as they consider both their energy and national security priorities. Clean is cheaper. Clean doesn’t pollute. And now clean is more secure. Distributed generation means an attacker cannot disable the entire system by destroying a small number of indispensable assets. The more power generated across millions of different locations, the fewer choke points there are to attack – and the less leverage anyone has over us. To put it bluntly: No one is going to send a fleet of 38,000 drones to blow up the $10,000 worth of solar panels on your roof. As batteries become cheaper and provide power for longer periods, households and communities will become less dependent not only on oil and gas but also on large, centralized utilities – the same twentieth-century clunkers that make decreasing strategic economic sense for households and governments alike. The fossil-fuel oligarchs have always tried to control the supply and, thus, the price of energy. But in the end, they all needed the money, so the oil always flowed. The modern Monkey Wrench Gang just wants to disrupt. And if we continue to believe that historical stability is future stability, we only give them more opportunities to. The argument for clean energy is no longer just one about price, or even the climate; the case for clean energy is now also the case for bolstering individual freedom and national security. Clean has never looked cheaper, better, or safer. |
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Posted by: Art Hunter
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