Page 40 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

The Green Industrial Revolution Chapter j 2 17

take advantage of the power of ocean currents; and ocean thermal energy
conversion devices, which extract energy from the differences in temperature
between the ocean’s shallow and deep waters.
Bacterial, or microbial fuel cell energy generation, sounds too far out there,
but Better Products (or British Petroleum) made a $500 million investment in
the process, which is now being developed by researchers at the University of
California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois, Urbana. The process uses
living, nonhazardous-use microbial fuel cells bacteria to generate electricity.
The researcher envisions small household power generators that look like
aquariums but are filled with water and microscopic bacteria instead of fish.
When the bacteria inside are fed, the power generatordreferred to as a
“biogenerator”dwould produce electricity.
While all these power generation systems result in electricity, none are as
cheap as current fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. Nor were fossil fuels
cheap when they started in the late 1890s, forming the basis for the 2IR. To
maximize renewable power efficiency, renewables need to be integrated as linked
or bundled supply sources according to the natural physical characteristics of the
area where they exist. Further, these intermittent power generation resources are
greatly enhanced with storage devices since the sun is not always shining
(especially at night) or the wind blowing.
Thus there is a need for storage devices either natural, like a salt formation, or
artificial, like a batterydnew advance batteries and fuel cell programs are now
coming out in California and through the US Department of Energy. Once you
collect the electricity, the storage device lets you regulate the distribution so that
you can optimize the process. The government support for the 2IR in terms of
tax incentives, funds, and even land must be repeated for the GIR. The incentives
for the 2IR must be reduced and applied for the GIR. This is called “tax shifting”
and has been very successful in other areas so that there is little or no additional
tax upon the consumers. There is no need for further debate or delay.
As people become familiar with the concepts and the fact that renewable
energy technology is not as cheap today as fossil-fuel systems, Americans will
begin to understand the economic move and change for local renewable energy
generation and distribution of power (see Appendix C) from central grid power
plants. The industrial revolution that developed central grid power plants was
significant at the time for the coordination and costs for generating power
supplies to communities. Nonetheless, this 2IR meant that the price of fossil
fuels for power plants was reduced over time. At least 3 or 4 decades were
needed to achieve that goal. There is substantial evidence and the series of
laws at the turn of the 20th century to document how central power plants
along with fuel supplies became economic monopolies that then controlled the
fuel (primarily turning to fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas) supplies and
hence large manufacturing and industrial markets. Despite litigation over the
next 4 to 5 decades, these large fuel suppliers and power generators remain the
dominant global economic business organizations.