interviews

It's a professorial paradox to be sure. Naturally, there's a lot of ground to cover. To be "sustainable" is to possess the capacity to endure. Sort of broad-sounding, no? For clarity, if we look to the secondary definition of the term, Wiktionary lists the meaning as "able to be sustained for an indefinite period without damaging the environment, or without depleting a resource; renewable."

This modern definition of the term certainly narrows things down for us, yet 'sustainability' remains a dense subject matter. And a sticky one. When talking about issues related to the topics of energy, environment and economy, there are many differing viewpoints out there. For the topic of energy in particular, unraveling the knot of policy roadblocks, technological limitations, and environmental issues only complicates things further. In today's hyper-polarized media climate, sorting out the issues– and deciding where you stand– is a challenge for most people.

And if sustainability is hard to learn about, just imagine what it's like to teach people– young people, at that– how to better understand and develop a sustainable economic infrastructure in world with so many highly unsustainable systems in place. How do you tell them what they need to know when so much of the information that contextualizes each issue is either inaccessibly technical or under-informed and biased?

One man is offering solutions, and Beyond the Light Switch is helping to animate his commendable efforts in public education. Professor Greg Möller, Ph.D.  teaches a course called Principals of Sustainability at the University of Idaho, and he's using footage from Beyond the Light Switch to help disseminate information on sustainable energy use. Dr. Möller's using what he calls "an experimental pedagogy" and incorporating new technologies in order to teach his students about what it's going to take in order to turn our current energy economy into something that's sustainable on a global scale.

To that end, Dr. Möller has created a 10-chapter, multi-part series of 'doculectures' on all things related to sustainability– everything from waste management to electric generation. Anything that can and should be made sustainable, really. The series is still a work in progress, with the doculecture chapters falling under the umbrella of Dr. Möller's online course. Each doculecture is available for viewing on Vimeo now. 

For Chapter 6 in his series, titled Energy Sustainability, Dr. Möller  drew upon footage from BTLS to help put our current use of fossil fuels, alternative energies, and the power grid into perspective for his students. BTLS and the Braintrust are incredibly pleased to be part of a growing curriculum committed to energy education. Here are some additional doculectures from the series that Dr. Möller  picked out as especially interesting to fans and followers of Beyond the Light Switch: 

Reports continued to come in Monday night detailing the third explosion to hit the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in the past 4 days.The plant, located in northeastern Japan, was first ravaged by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that hit northern Japan last week. Soon after, two hydrogen explosions caused fires that have since been contained. News of the first two explosions only worsened the public's fear of a catastrophic release of radiation into the atmosphere. According to one report, the third explosion "was heard at 6:10 a.m. local time on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Nuclear Safety Agency said at a news conference. The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said the explosion occurred near the suppression pool in the reactor's containment vessel. The pool was later found to have a defect."

Not good news. And while leaking radiation is a major fear, early reports still vary when it comes to just how bad the situation is. According to the TIME NewsFeed: "In a televised address to the nation at 11 a.m., Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan spoke of the high-pressure situation. Kan advised people within 19 miles of the affected power plant to stay indoors. According to the Associated Press, some 180,000 people within a 12-mile radius had already been evacuated. "There is a very high risk of further radioactive leaks," he said."I ask you to stay calm." Still, it has been confirmed that "radiation leaks are now severe enough to pose a significant threat to people's health"...and that's a statement from Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety spokesman.

The massive earthquake, which has shifted the entire island of Japan by an estimated eight feet, is truly a disaster on a global scale. It's also a disaster that has very suddenly thrust nuclear power back into the limelight...and to say the exposure has been unflattering would obviously be a gross understatement. This is the kind of disaster, on the scale of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, that will take people—both in Japan, and elsewhere—a very long time to forget...or forgive.

Right now, the hope is that the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant will avoid a full meltdown. CBS News defines a meltdown as "when the nuclear fuel inside the reactor gets so hot, it literally melts. Uranium pellets are inside the long fuel rods. If the reactor is not cooled properly, the tubes can fall apart, with the radioactive material falling to the bottom." A description that sounds scarily like the preface to a China Syndrome-esque scenario, but CBS News has also reported that the situation at Fukushima Dai-ichi is not yet as bad as the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, and nowhere near the Chernobly tragedy: "Even with the two [update: three] Fukushima explosions, so far this is nothing like Chernobyl. In 1986, the control rods malfunctioned and the fuel rods melted down. A subsequent explosion catapulted tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere."

According to the popular saying—one often bandied about real estate circles; when it comes to deciding where to live there's little else that matters more than location. Soon, however, the criteria for judging the desirability of a particular locale may be getting a little more...specific. We're not just talking about the various and sundry aspirations loosely contained under headings like 'standard of living' or 'quality of life'—in these tough economic times people need to crunch a lot of numbers before making the difficult decision to stay put or uproot. For many, the numbers their local utility companies are coming up with are starting to raise serious concerns. Not only in California (see previous post), but across the country in places like Albuquerque, Central Ohio, West Virginia and Holland, Michigan rates are on the rise. At the rate of 4, 5 and 6 percent, the increases have hardly gone unnoticed. Take, for instance, West Virginia State Treasurer John Perdue's recent speech in which he officially announced his candidacy for Governor of West Virginia:

"Over the past few months, I have listened to many West Virginians about their hopes and dreams," Perdue said. "They want good-paying jobs. They want a better life for their children. They are concerned about skyrocketing utility costs." That's right, for the people of West Virginia utility rates are right up at the top of the priority list alongside the desire for good jobs and good schools. If Perdue is elected, he has promised to "stand up to the utility companies and tell them that their rate increases are crippling both our citizens and our businesses". Easier said than done. West Virginia is the second-largest coal-producing state in the nation—they're also the second-poorest state in the nation. But between the environmental concerns and controversy surrounding mountain-top removal and the looming threat of carbon cap legislature—West Virginians are stuck between a lump of coal and a hard place. This means that state politicians like Perdue may have a much bigger job on their hands than just getting "the fox out of the henhouse".

This week, Chinese news outlet Chinadialogue published an informative article about the future of coal in West Virginia. The article is titled: America's Coal War. To put WV's woes in perspective for the rest of us, the author explains

California's largest electric utility is desperate to slow down a new program that's going to revolutionize the way small businesses pay for their power. The company claims customers need more time to understand 'dynamic' pricing, but higher "time-of-use" rates will mean a new way of doing business for many of California's small business owners.

Consumer advocate groups and The California Small Business Association have come out against the new pricing for electricity, but state regulators have already approved the program. According to the San Francisco Chronicle "PG&E in November will start charging its roughly 500,000 small-business customers different rates for electricity at different times of day. Businesses will also face significantly higher rates on a handful of days each year when power supplies are strained, either by hot weather or problems with the electricity grid."

It should be noted that business owners will be able to "opt out" of the program —for the time being, anyway. According to The Chronicle, "the California Small Business Association has now asked the California Public Utilities Commission, which approved PG&E's program, to slow down the timetable for the changes. And PG&E, to an extent, agrees, arguing that the utility needs more time to educate its customers."

What utilities like PG&E want to "educate" all of us about is the transition to "time-of-use" rates. So what does all of this actually mean? Wikipedia breaks down the different categories of time-based pricing in relation to electricity industry like this:

• time-of-use pricing (TOU pricing)—whereby electricity prices are set for a specific time period on an advance or forward basis, typically not changing more often than twice a year. Prices paid for energy consumed during these periods are pre-established and known to consumers in advance, allowing them to vary their usage in response to such prices and manage their energy costs by shifting usage to a lower cost period or reducing their consumption overall;
• critical peak pricing—whereby time-of-use prices are in effect except for certain peak days, when prices may reflect the costs of generating and/or purchasing electricity at the wholesale level
• real-time pricing (also: dynamic pricing)—whereby electricity prices may change as often as hourly (exceptionally more often). Price signal is provided to the user on an advanced or forward basis, reflecting the utility’s cost of generating and/or purchasing electricity at the wholesale level; and
• peak load reduction credits—for consumers with large loads who enter into pre-established peak load reduction agreements that reduce a utility’s planned capacity obligations.

The Wiki-editors go on to recommend dynamic pricing, saying that "time-based pricing will reflect the price variations on the market. Such variations include both regular oscillations due to the demand pattern of users, supply issues (such as availability of intermittent natural resources: water flow, wind), and occasional exceptional price peaks." The general idea is that dynamic pricing begets consumer response—once people are paying more for electricity depending on when they use it, they tend to pay more attention to their usage. While it may be true that Americans have long enjoyed cheap electric rates in comparison to other countries, but the days of power that's "too cheap to meter" are decidedly coming to an end...

Nuclear reprocessing. You often see it in the news, usually related to what countries are doing it and why. Reprocessing in India and China may get more ink, but the the U.K. & France do far more of it. In the United States, on the other hand, we do not currently reprocess our spent nuclear fuel. So why not? Now that many environmentalists are reevaluating nuclear power (thanks to its status as a low-carbon fuel), many are asking just that: why shouldn't we be recycling this stuff? Almost seems like the least we can do, given the complications of mining and transporting uranium, right?

Not so fast. The fellows at The Union of Concerned Scientists aren't quite so keen on reprocessing. In fact, they're actually quite...concerned about it. As scientists. In their own words, here's what their list of major concerns boils down to:

• Reprocessing would increase the risk of nuclear terrorism.
• Reprocessing would increase the ease of nuclear proliferation.
• Reprocessing would hurt U.S. nuclear waste management efforts.
• Reprocessing would be very expensive.

Very legitimate-sounding concerns, scary-sounding, even—but not everyone would agree. After all, France and Britain seem to be doing alright and they've been reprocessing for decades. To find out more about the argument for reprocessing, we talked to CEO of Duke Energy (and Beyond the Light Switch expert) Jim Rogers.

Jim Rogers knows energy. Just this past Monday he rolled out plans for a $13.7 billion megadeal that will make Duke Energy the largest electric utility in the nation. So how can he consider something that has raised such serious concerns in the past to now be no different than "recycling"? First, Rogers addressed fears that reprocessing will create a greater risk of nuclear terrorism, saying that he finds it much easier to mitigate the risk of proliferation "in the 

...That is the question. But if we don't drill, how else are we going to secure the nation's supply of what many are calling the 'bridge fuel' that's going to help us go from a carbon-based (coal) energy economy to a low-carbon (or even carbon-free) one: natural gas.

In the documentary, BTLS focuses on two gas-drilling booms or gas 'plays', as the industry calls them-the established Barnett shale in Texas, and the gargantuin Marcellus shale, which covers much of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. Due to the recent discovery of the Marcellus shale's potential for natural gas production (once thought to be played out), gas drilling companies are making a mad dash to lease land and get wells drilled. And in many places (as BTLS documented in Houston, Pennsylvania) the gas boom has meant economic prosperity for many struggling farmers and local business owners.
 
Also resulting from the rush to drill: concerns over the environmental impacts of shale drilling, specifically those impacts resulting from a new technique of gas-drilling called hydraulic fracturing [also shortened to hydrofracking, or just fracking]. But the effects of getting that gas out of the ground aren't just going to impact the areas covering the Marcellus, there are many other gas-producing shale formations covering the rest of the continental U.S...including the state of Michigan.

Michigan's Antrim shale was the site of a large gas play in the 1990's, at the time making it "the most actively drilled shale gas play in the US, with thousands of wells drilled." That's over 10,000 wells drilled. So do Michiganders need to be worried about fracking-related water and air contamination? For answers I talked to Amy Mall, Senior Policy Analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Amy contributes to the NRDC's awesomely informative staff blog, 'Switchboard', and is the authority on anything and everything related to oil and gas production.

Right now, however, you may be asking yourself 'isn't drilling regulated by the government'? The BTLS Braintrust asked the same question of the NRDC, who reminded us that state regulators only know what we tell them. If communities and land-owners ask the right questions of regulators and drilling companies (preferably with a lawyer present, cautions Mall) we can all avoid a fate similar to that of DISH, TX.

According to Mall, gas drilling permits are issued by year, so in addition to the more than 10,000 active wells currently in Michigan, there were 270 new permits issued in the state last year alone. Each of those 270 communities could be the next to face an environmental clean up if drillers and land owners don't proceed with caution. So what are the right questions? And who should you ask?