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A half-century ago, nuclear was hyped as “too cheap to meter” and, when Brian Mulroney became PM in the '80s, he terminated Canada's research into renewables because “the energy crisis is over.”
That cut led to my appointment as head of the Solar Energy Society of Canada, the only association left to promote alternative energies. My lobbying strategy was that, even if government perceived no economic need for renewables, diversification of energy supply is a good thing, and there was a growing environmental imperative to adopt sustainable energies for our planet's health.
When Pons Fleischmann said cold fusion will generate unlimited electricity, our eyes again glazed over with the promise of more energy than we could ever use. The Toronto Star featured my editorial, “Is our world ready for cold fusion?”, wherein I argued that a vision of unlimited and/or cheap electricity would have the unintended consequence of accelerating depletion of our planet’s resources by untethering the major economic constraint on their exploitation.
Lay people can be excused for not understanding the complexities of energy, so advocates of sustainability must insist on the most appropriate use of any energy in every application. Only after demand has been drastically minimized should we argue for any supply of green power from solar & wind, green heat from geothermal & bioenergy, or green fuel from ethanol & biodiesel.
Solar & wind are inexhaustible but, if they can meet our current wants, how long until we demand more? Whether to alleviate poverty for others or to boost our own affluent lifestyle, a response for "more-more-more" is human nature.
If you doubt my thesis, ask yourself if you would change anything in your diet if all types of food became unlimited & free? Or in your vacation plans if airplanes no longer paid for fuel? My contention is that 'free' energy would have dramatic & profound impacts on the way we do things, and many of these impacts would be unnecessarily & extremely negative in the broader picture.
Low-carbon is better than high-carbon, but cheap or excess energy will increase demand to feed our consumerism, and we do not need a faster & cheaper way to deplete finite resources. Even if the plan is to relocate to another planet after we pillage this one, we must look beyond global warming (yes it is a crisis and, yes, it is anthropogenic) and consider the implications of a Pandora's Box that simply replaces one energy addiction with another.
As I warned decades ago, any promise that energy could be or should be unlimited or free (regardless of how clean it is) is not a goal which advocates of renewable energy should promulgate. I have always supported green, but covering the world with PV panels or turbine blades, without a prerequisite demand for maximum conservation & efficiency, could eliminate a key factor that helps to slow the exhaustion of our planet’s resources.
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