456% Renewable!

Last week, I talked about the three issues our video project revolves around: renewable energy, sustainability, and individuals making a difference. I want to dive a little further into the renewable energy focus here.

One of the questions we'll be asking in our video project is: what is the potential for each renewable energy technology we visit around the country? If we as a nation really drove to make it happen, Apollo-style, what percentage of the country's electricity could each renewable energy technology provide? Many Americans don't believe it's possible to have 100% renewable energy. After all, the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine, right?

I'm fascinated by renewable energy technologies, and if I had to be a dork about something it would be that. I read enough to know that, if we wanted to, we could supply 100% of our nation's power from commercial land-based and offshore wind. Of course, that comes with a lot of "if's", like a whole lot of wind turbines in a whole lot of places, upgraded transmission lines, unprecedented capital investment, political support, etc., but fundamentally it is possible if we wanted it to happen. And that's just commercial wind. Solar thermal technologies like those at Nevada Solar One (it's on the list of destinations) could produce 100% of our electricity, IF we wanted it to. So I took each renewable energy technology that we are visiting on our travel project and contacted the industry advocate organizations, like AWEA - American Wind Energy Association, etc., and asked them what the potential of their technologies were. Here's what I found:
Solar photovoltaic - 100%
Solar thermal - 100%
Tidal power - 3.5%
Wave power - 6.5%
Land-based and offshore commercial wind - 100%
Residential, backyard turbines - 20%
Geothermal electricity - 100%
Biogas from waste sources - 10%
Hydroelectric - 16%

Added up, we're able to produce 456%, or four and a half times the amount of electricity we need in the U.S. with renewable sources. And yet, the politicians and pundits continue to insist that we will continue to rely on coal, nuclear, oil, and gas to provide electricity no matter how much we invest in renewable energy. WHY? We need to be asking them why! Our country has an amazing abundance of natural resources for renewable energy. We'll show each technology in action and explain how they work. We want people to see what's real and available, then when they hear people insisting it can't be done, to question those assertions! Who and why do people insist it can't be done?

We put this message into video for the Climate Matters video contest on Vimeo.com:

456% Renewable! from Colin McCullough on Vimeo.
The more views our video gets, the better chance it has to win! Please visit http://www.vimeo.com/climatematters to see our two videos in the contest, '456% Renewable!' and 'An Inconvenient Youth'.

Be well,
Colin