Is This A Good Idea? Living Off The Grid?

August 17, 2009

This past Sunday not only was my birthday, but also the anniversary of moment that Elvis left the building, metaphysically speaking, back in 1977. In the King’s honor, I spent much of the afternoon enjoying his favorite grilled peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, washed down with Dr. Pepper—while repeatedly watching this YouTube video of Elvis practicing karate.

It may have been that harmonic convergence of prodigious amounts of lipids and macho energy that induced me suddenly to experience a transcendent, ecstatic vision. I glimpsed an alternate reality in which a still-living, septuagenarian Elvis was holed up somewhere in the desert outside of Vegas, taking care of business as ever, but now in an environmentally pious, non-industrialized, totally self-sustainable lifestyle. He’d traded in the opulent excess of Graceland for a sustainable mud-and-straw house, where there was nary a power line, utility meter or flush toilet in sight. Instead, the Green Elvis powered his guitar amp with electricity generated by an array of wind turbines and solar panels, drank and bathed in water from wells and cisterns, ate only locally-grown barbequed pulled pork, and wore jumpsuits resplendent with recycled sequins, woven from hemp grown in his personal indoor hydroponic gardening cabinet. He still avidly re-read Frank Adams’ The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus, the book he reportedly was still clutching, in our dimension, when they found him lifeless in the bathroom. But now he did so while perched on a water-conserving composting toilet. Elvis had not only left the building. He’d gone totally off-the-grid.

Okay, so I made all that up. But if alternate-universe Elvis did opt for off-the-grid living, he’d be joining in what might be a nascent trend. While precise numbers are tough to come by, Home Power magazine estimated back in 2006 that 180,000 American families were living off the grid. Becoming totally self-sufficient, and utilizing only sustainable resources that are carbon-neutral and don’t damage the environment, has some definite advantages. When you’re off-the-grid, you don’t have to pay electric, gas, water and sewage bills any more. You don’t have to feel guilty about leaving lights on because the juice comes from a coal-fired power plant that spews greenhouse gas emissions, and because the coal comes from mountaintop removal in Appalachia. You don’t have to fret that you’re squandering significant quantities of the world’s supply of fresh water to dispose of your poo-poo. And if you take the idea a step further and start cultivating your own food, well, homegrown tomatoes are a lot juicier and tastier than the pale-looking, rock-hard variety that you find in supermarkets.

The downsides? The equipment to generate your own energy isn’t cheap—a state-of-the-art rooftop wind turbine, for example, costs about $12,000, and a system of solar panels can cost $20,000 or more. And you’ll probably have to reduce your energy consumption. As this article in Mother Earth News explains, off-the-grid generating systems produce less energy than similar-sized ones tied into the electrical grid, because off-the-grid systems have to convert electricity from DC to AC current, and that exacts a stiff penalty in efficiency. Worse yet, if it’s cloudy or a windless day and your system’s batteries run down, you have no choice but to go dark. As a result, you better get used to canning your home-grown vegetables, since you never know when the freezer is going to stop running. If you like alternative-universe Elvis’s sewage composting toilet, be prepared to shell out $2,000 for a complete system. (Also be prepared for it to work very slowly in cold, damp weather, proponents caution.)

Like most ideas, this isn’t a totally new one. In the early part of the 20th Century, wide swaths of the U.S. were without electrical lines, because power companies thought it was unprofitable to wire them. As Paul Gipe notes in his book Wind Power: Renewable Energy for Home, Farm and Business, in the 1920s and early 1930s, farmers on the Great Plains installed hundreds of thousands of small wind turbines on the Great Plains to light their houses and charge the batteries on the energy-hungry vacuum tube radios that provided them with a link to the outside world. After the New Deal’s Rural Electrification Act of 1936 provided federal funds to wire remote areas, energy self-sufficiency was no longer necessary, and the old turbines and battery-chargers mostly were left to rust.

When the idea of living off the grid resurfaced in the 1990s and 2000s, it was driven less by the need for self-sufficiency. Some of the new off-the-gridders seem more intent on doing their part to slow global warming, which is largely caused by the burning of carbon-based fuels to generate electricity. Others, such as John Twelve Hawks, the reclusive author of dystopic anti-technological sci-fi novels such as The Traveler, perhaps are more interested in making a statement about the inherent evil of our postmodern culture. Some off-the-gridders go it alone, but increasingly, others are banding together and starting off-the-grid settlements such as Dancing Rabbit Village, a community in northwest Missouri whose 40 residents live in “natural” buildings made from straw, clay, adobe and recycled lumber, grow their own food, use electricity generated by solar panels, and drive biodiesel-powered "veggie vans."

So what do you think? Are you ready to spurn the utility companies and live a total DIY lifestyle? Or would you prefer to remain plugged in? Express your opinion below.

The Toyota I-REAL?

April 09, 2009

    This concept is a little, ah…tricky to explain, so bear with me.

You know that comfy La-Z-Boy you have in your living room?  Imagine if it had three wheels, joysticks in both armrests that allowed you to steer right or left, a plug-in electric motor that would propel you on the sidewalks at walking-jogging speed and then gear up to speeds of up to 20 miles per hour on the streets, perimeter monitoring sensors that would alert you to other vehicles or pedestrians who might stray into your path, a wireless Internet connection, and an LED screen on the back of the chair that can both serve as a set of turn signals/brake lights and display the message of your choice to the rest of the world.

    What I’m describing is a Toyota i-REAL, a concept that the automaker describes as a “personal mobility vehicle,” a single-person conveyance designed for trips that are just a little too far for walking, but close enough that driving there in your conventional car seems excessive.

Keep reading...there's more!

Mash Ups

December 28, 2008

One of the most intriguing phenomena in the Digital Age is the mashup, a cut-and-paste mélange of two completely different digital entities. Web 3.0 developers, for example, create mashups of different software applications — say, a social networking app that lets users review restaurants or nightclubs, combined with Google Maps, so that they can see how to get to that trendy tapas joint or pan-Asian diner.

In the music world, DJs use mixing software  to dice and slice digital music files and reassemble them, creating sometimes startling syntheses. (Perhaps the most famous music mashup is DJ Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, a synthesis of Jay-Z’s 2003 hiphop CD The Black Album and The Beatles’ eponymous 1968 double LP, popularly known because of its blank cover as “The White Album.”) And video mashups are a staple on YouTube, including this mashup of the Three Stooges tossing cream pies with footage of the recent incident in which an angry Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President George W. Bush.

So anyway,I’ve been thinking: What would happen if we took the same concept and applied it in a different way? Instead of digital content, we would combine two of the cutting-edge, controversial and/or outlandish ideas that we’ve previously explored and debated in this blog? A Good Idea mashup, if you will.

Which Energy Independence Plan is Better — T. Boone Pickens or Google? Part 2

November 04, 2008

If you think it’s odd that a Texas oilman is proposing a plan to build massive wind farms to wean the U.S. from its dependence upon fossil fuels, consider this: He’s got competition from an even more unlikely player — a company that isn’t even in the energy industry. I’m talking about none other than Google, the search engine, online advertising and video giant that is currently angling to take over the software world with its Google Chrome browser and suite of cloud-computing applications.
(Here’s my previous blog on that subject.)

As it turns out, Google does alternative energy, too. Or rather, it wants to, in a big way. In October, the company unveiled its ambitious, multi-trillion dollar plan for weaning the U.S. away from the burning of coal and oil for electrical power and cutting the use of petroleum to power cars and trucks by nearly 40 percent by 2030. Jeffery Greenblatt the Princeton-trained researcher whom Google recently hired as its climate and energy technology manager, explains:

Google's proposal will benefit the US by increasing energy security, protecting the environment, creating new jobs, and helping to create the conditions for long-term prosperity. Some of the necessary funds will be public, but much of it will come from the private sector — a typical approach for infrastructure and high technology investments.

Here’s how Google would have us do it. In contrast with Pickens’ plan, which relies entirely upon wind power and converting vehicles to natural gas, the Internet behemoth would attack the problem from multiple angles.

Which Energy Independence Plan is Better — T. Boone Pickens, or Google? Part 1

October 27, 2008

T. Boone Pickens has been putting up so many commercials to advertise his energy independence plan that his crinkly, octogenarian visage is becoming nearly as familiar as the GEICO cavemen or Max, the annoying talking Volkswagen Beetle who startles car shoppers in VW commercials. So what is Pickens, who became the 369th richest person on the planet primarily by drilling for oil and taking over other oil companies (or attempting to do so, and driving up the price of his stock holdings), doing promoting wind power as an alternative to oil? Well, let’s let him do the talking.

From his Web site, here’s more detail on his argument for wind power, and the specifics of his plan, which he boasts could turn the U.S. into the “Saudi Arabia of wind power":

Obama’s Plan to Fight Global Warming

October 06, 2008

According to the transcript of the first presidential debate, GOP candidate John McCain was the only one to actually mention global warming as an issue — but he did so only in passing, as an additional justification for his plan to build 45 new nuclear power plants, which we discussed in last week’s blog. As McCain explained,

Nuclear power is not only important as far as eliminating our dependence on foreign oil, but it's also responsibility as far as climate change is concerned and the issue I have been involved in for many, many years and I'm proud of the work of the work that I've done there along with President Clinton.

I have to point out that while nuclear power may make sense as a measure to combat global warming, the argument that it will free us from dependence upon foreign oil is pretty much nonsensical.  According to U.S. Department of Energy data, the U.S. gets only about 50 million megawatt-hours of electricity from burning petroleum — a minuscule amount compared to the more than 2 billion megawatt-hours that are produced by burning coal, the fuel upon which we rely most heavily for electricity generation. Additionally, McCain didn't mention the estimated $315 billion cost, or how it would be funded (a hint: taxpayers may ultimately be on the hook for much of it). Or what he would do about disposing of nuclear waste, though he’s recently looked at shipping it to Siberia.

But I digress. We’re looking at Democratic candidate Barack Obama this week, and his approach to combating global warming.

Obama’s energy plan sets a goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, a more ambitious cutback than the 50 percent target set by the G-8 major industrial nations, which President Bush agreed to in July. Like McCain, Obama would establish a cap-and-trade system under which the government would set a ceiling on carbon emissions, and then issue permits to emit carbon. That, in turn, would allow companies to make money by reducing their emissions and then selling their permits to others. Unlike McCain, who would initially give away the permits, Obama would auction them off from the get-go, which he argues would ensure that polluters pay for every ton of emissions they release, giving them an even bigger incentive to clean up their act. Obama also would require that utility companies generate at least 10 percent of their electricity from solar, wind and geothermal sources by 2012.

Al Gore's Energy Challenge

August 08, 2008

Full disclosure here. While I am indeed extremely concerned about global warming and what we can do to avert a climate catastrophe in the too-near future, there’s an ulterior motive behind this week’s essay as well. I’m hoping, albeit improbably, that my favorite Futurama talking-head-in- a- jar, former Vice-President -turned- Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, will somehow stumble upon this page via Google Alerts and actually deign to post a comment on my blog. As you can see from this picture of his Nashville office, he’s got a few things on his plate right now. But hey, Mr. Vice-President, if you do happen to be reading this, it wouldn’t take too long to pound out a few words of encouragement or wisdom, would it? And while you’re at it, sir, please feel free to weigh in on the recent controversy in this space regarding the relative merits of Survivor vs. Night Ranger when it comes to 1980s Lite Metal mullet-rock. We all could benefit from a statesmanlike resolution of that question.

                     

Should We Replace Oil With Switchgrass?

April 03, 2008

I don’t know about you, but I feel pretty bummed every time I pull my aging, bumper-sticker laden Saturn sedan up to a gas station pump, and not just because I know that filling the tank is going to eat another chunk out of my bank balance. Since I work out of my home, I don’t drive as much as I used to, but even the 6,000 miles that I put on the odometer each year puts about 2.1 tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, according to this handy dandy carbon footprint travel calculator that I recently found on the Web. Neither do I much like the idea that I’m contributing to the ongoing American orgy of oil consumption that some critics say finances terrorism and/or props up authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. (Of course, it should be mentioned that according to the U.S. Department of Energy, our biggest foreign oil source is decidedly non-authoritarian, non-terroristic Canada.) But I’m in a bind. I can’t afford right now to trade in my circa-1997 clunker for one of those spiffy Toyota Prius hybrids and then shell out another $6,000 or so for the aftermarket modification that’ll enable it to run primarily on electricity. By the same token, I don’t want to feel all angst-ridden every time I get the urge to roll over to the local American Apparel store and buy some hip-looking '70s retro tube socks.

Finding an alternative fuel to replace gasoline, one that would work in old-fashioned internal combustion engines like the one my Saturn has, would be the ideal short-term fix. For years, agribusiness and Midwestern politicians have been touting corn ethanol as the panacea for our plight — one that, perhaps not coincidentally, would also jack up the market price of the crop from which it is made. But switching to corn ethanol wouldn’t do that much to reduce our energy consumption, since according to this CNN.com article, the fuel yields only 40 percent more energy than it takes to cultivate and distill it. It wouldn’t help much with greenhouse gas emissions, either, because burning it produces only 10 percent to 15 percent less of those emissions than gasoline. Beyond that, corn-based ethanol in some ways might actually exacerbate global warming, because as this article explains, it causes U.S. farmers to grow corn instead of soybeans, creating an economic incentive for Brazilian farmers to slash and burn down more of the Amazon rain forest so the land can be used for soy cultivation.

But there is another possibility. I’m enthused about a study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, entitled “Net Energy of Cellulosic Ethanol from Switchgrass.” The study focused upon switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), a hardy plant that covered great stretches of the North American landscape in the days before farmers supplanted it with food crops and pastureland, and its potential as raw material to make cellulosic ethanol fuel. After switchgrass was grown at 10 farms over a five-year period, researchers found that the resulting biomass was capable of generating more than five times as much energy as it took to cultivate it. Moreover, when the fuel made from the switchgrass was burned, the estimated greenhouse gas emissions were 94 percent lower than what would have been emitted by an equivalent amount of gasoline. Furthermore, cellulosic ethanol isn’t going to put a dent into food crop production or endanger the rain forest, because the hardy, fast-growing perennial can be grown in the U.S. on land  that’s unsuitable for other types of farming.

One of the reseachers, U.S. Department of Agriculture geneticist Ken Vogel, explained the switchgrass study’s significance to the Omaha World Herald:

"This clearly demonstrates that switchgrass is not only energy efficient, but can be used in a renewable biofuel economy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and enhance rural economies," Vogel said.

So what is the downside? Well, critics have argued that cellulosic ethanol would be too expensive to produce in large enough quantities, because turning it into fuel requires enzymes that first have to be slowly and laboriously extracted from organisms such as the fungus Trichoderma reesei, which, unlike our own stomachs, can digest cellulose. That’s why one of corn ethanol’s congressional champions, House Agriculture Committee chairman Colin Peterson of Minnesota, recently predicted that switchgrass is at least a decade away from being a viable alternative to gasoline. "I'm not sure cellulosic ethanol will ever get off the ground,” Reuters quoted him as saying. (Peterson’s home state, it should be mentioned, grows a lot of corn.)

But it turns out that at least two companies, Illinois-based Coskata and the Alternative Energy Technology Center in Texas, are now saying that they can produce cellulosic ethanol for less than $1 a gallon, which would make it significantly cheaper than corn ethanol, and way cheaper than gasoline. And that’s just the start. As this Wired article details, scientists are racing to find cheaper, more efficient methods, such as a genetically engineered microorganism that  would consume cellulose and excrete ethanol, without an intermediate enzyme-extraction process.

Cellulosic ethanol — combined, of course, with the use of other alternative energy sources and increased conservation — seems to me like the obvious way to go. So obvious, in fact, that these days even the ex-oilman currently occupying the White House is talking enthusiastically about using “stalk grass” and wood chips to power our automobiles. But money speaks more truth about priorities, and the actual amount of federal funding for developing cellulosic ethanol technology in the Department of Energy’s FY 2008 budget request is an underwhelming $179 billion. To put things in perspective, the U.S. spends about twice that much each day to fight the war in Iraq. (That’s according to the Iraq Insider blog.)

So here’s my proposal. Instead of aiming to reduce gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next decade, which is the Bush administration’s target, why don’t we aim higher? After all, JFK set a goal of landing on the moon in 10 years, and American ingenuity made it happen in eight. Let’s ratchet up the research budget by a factor of 10 or 20 — or whatever it takes — and set a goal of completely replacing gasoline with cellulosic ethanol by 2018. Then I finally can drive to the store and buy all the tube socks that I desire, sans remorse. Does that seem reasonable? Feel free to express your opinion below.