solar power

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: 

For decades, the advance of distributed solar power in the United States has seen its share of setbacks. Distributed solar, as opposed to centralized (think big desert arrays like these), refers to solar photovoltaic panels—PV panels for short. In fact, just a few short years ago, headlines everywhere were warning investors of the impending burst of a 'solar bubble' caused by too much supply and not enough demand. While it's true that many solar start-ups have since fallen by the wayside, a new industry report by VLSI Research is seeing more than a light at the end of the tunnel—they're seeing the potential for a PV explosion.

According to weSRCH, who published the report, 2011 is slated to be a banner year for PV sales and investment. VLSI's market research states that PV sales are "expected to grow 24%, driving sales to in excess of $12B". Sounds like good news...and boy, did we need some good news. The recent financial crisis caused more than one hiccup for the growth of PV: in 2010, Spain (a global leader in solar installations) was forced to cut back their feed-in tariffs for solar. In the same year, the PACE financing scheme for solar installations in some U.S. states ran into some legal trouble of their own. According the VLSI, however, there’s a silver lining to be found here, too: "Looking back, 2010 was a record year for PV Manufacturing Equipment, beating the previous peak reached in 2008 by around 10%."

The report goes on to name companies like Applied Materials, Amtech, Apollo Solar, Komatsu, Jusung, GS Solar, and Meyer Burger as the big success stories of 2010. It also sites new manufacturing innovations as one reason for PV's surprising growth rate last year. What's interesting to note is that of the companies mentioned above, only Applied Materials and Amtech are based in the U.S. The others are from around the globe: South Korea, Switzerland, Japan, and of course, China. But this doesn't mean the U.S. doesn't stand to benefit greatly from 2011's 'sunny' forecast for solar sales—quite to the contrary...

Subsidies for renewable energy may be going away...again.

America's stormy love affair with renewable energy began in the 1970's, when President Jimmy Carter introduced subsidies for what were then termed 'alternative' energy resources. But the burgeoning wind and solar industries that grew under Carter were not fated to last long. Nurturing an infant renewable energy industry was not part of Ronald Reagan's presidential image, nor his platform. Beyond the Light Switch looks at this pivotal time in our nation's history as a means to understand the current state of our energy policy and energy politics.

Currently, the hopes of many long-suffering renewable energy supporters (and industry players) have been pinned on the Obama administration. And Obama did make good--by ushering in subsidies for renewables, known as the "1603 grants" (so-called for the section of the stimulus bill that created them). And just in case you were wondering what those grants actually do, today The LA Times was kind enough to lay it out for us--the 1603 grants "paid up to 30% of the cost of projects breaking ground by the end of this year. Renewable facilities generating a combined 4,250 megawatts (the equivalent of roughly four large nuclear plants) were supported by the program as of March, according to a report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; that output is doubtless far higher now. The grants have created thousands of jobs, and helped clean the air and wean the country off fossil fuels. But all that may be about to stop".

Sounds scary, doesn't it? Well, what's happening is...