How to actually design a sustainable energy system that withstands disasters

Anyone who’s ever been backcountry camping can appreciate what the world was like before electricity . . . for a few days. While the lack of notifications and technology can be rejuvenating, most of us wouldn’t be comfortable or even survive long if this were a permanent situation. However, as recently as 150 years ago, nearly anyone who lit their homes and businesses did so with oil lights or candles. 

Now the presence of electricity is so ubiquitous that we can fully appreciate it as a core physiological need only by considering what would happen if we suddenly didn’t have it. When extended electrical blackouts occur during forest fires, strong winds, or ice storms, our daily lives become crippled. This fragility of the power grid makes our own lives fragile. Electricity has indeed become a critical physiological necessity that enables modern society to survive.

Currently, many energy grids can go down with single points of failure—a tree branch falling on an important wire can knock out power for many parts of the U.S. Northeastern Seaboard. This is what happens with centralized generation and distribution, especially when not built on principles of resiliency. As we gear up for the winter season and all the powerful storms that are becoming more frequent, destructive, and disruptive to our supply chains, having a resilient energy system is top of mind for utilities, governments, businesses and, increasingly, all of us at home. 

So how might we think beyond the current setup to design an ideal system that can reliably meet our needs? I talked with Ted Ko, an expert on regulated energy systems who has been a leader in clean energy and energy policy for more than a decade. Ko stressed how essential it is to design for the ideal, even if it’s rarely done. Most road maps to achieve an alternative energy system don’t have a destination. Instead, they offer a technology or general ideas on overcoming barriers that don’t consider what we ultimately need or how to achieve it. Ko emphasized that there’s a better way: “We need to create a long-term road map to a fully decarbonized energy system, by first defining that ideal future state and then detailing the policy steps to get there.”

Ideal Design Objective 1: Resilient

We have long and rightfully prioritized energy security and safety to protect something that, if brought down, would cause a national catastrophe. That means defending against attacks, making sure hacks don’t happen, and putting up physical barriers to keep people out of dangerous areas. But if we were to think beyond safety and security, we could start to consider a system that’s not only safe but also resilient. We must ask: What type of power grid could restart quickly, recover from disruptions, and still provide the energy that’s needed? Resilience would make us less vulnerable to the increasing storms and natural disasters from climate change, as well as attacks or other unpredictable incidents.

Ideal Design Objective 2: Sustainable

About 27% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. stem from electrical generation; the only sector that produces more is transportation. Plus, when you push electrons through wires or any conductor, energy is lost as heat in the material. In the U.S., the energy loss to distribution and transmission averages 5%. More energy gets lost the farther we transmit it, as it moves from high voltage to the lower voltages that our houses and personal electronics can use. Depending on the state, the loss can vary between 2% and 13%. In countries like India, it was as high as 30% in 2000; since 2014, it has been at about 20%. As of this writing, the world average loss is around 8.3%. This is one cost of having centralized power plants that push electricity many miles to where it’s actually used. Clean energy can have a big impact on reducing climate change, as it doesn’t create as many—or any—emissions and is often generated much closer to the point of consumption, such as the rooftop of the house consuming the electricity, which reduces the transmission waste. In an ideal energy system that seeks to reduce its contribution to climate change, it’s essential to design for sustainability.

Ideal Design Objective 3: Capable and Reliable

Clearly, any power grid system needs to be designed to be capable of providing enough energy to the right places, at the right time, in the form in which it needs to be used. Consumers shouldn’t have to worry about blackouts, brownouts, or other disruptions. Essentially, it should just work, which unfortunately is not a given for many people around the world.

Ideal Design Objective 4: Accessible

We all need power to function in the modern world. Electricity should be both affordable and available wherever it’s needed. Accessibility provides economic empowerment, because the cheaper and more available this fundamental necessity is, the more people can count on it to support the things they need to do. Whether it means having light for children to study in the evenings, or being able to charge a smartphone so work calls aren’t missed on the go, to having access to banking and emergency medical services, accessible electricity is a key physiological necessity of our modern world.

Designing the Ideal Energy System

If we were to imagine we lived in the SimCity video game, and to design an energy system from scratch, what would it look like? Ted Ko and I kept ourselves within the realm of the possible, considering only the technology we already have. The gap is not technological; what we’re missing is a holistic vision and the collaboration to get us there.

Renewable Energy Already Comes to You

There are more ways than ever to generate renewable energy, from wind to wave power to geothermal plants deep in the ground. Which one is right for you depends on several factors, not least of which is where you live. But let’s take the example of solar. It seems to be the best way of achieving local renewable generation in most places because sunlight comes to you at some point of the day or season anywhere on Earth’s surface. Other local generation could come from wind, geothermal, and/or wave energy, depending on where you live and the available resources nearby. This local generation meets our design objectives, especially because it can be managed by intelligent microgrids with many power-generation sites rather than a single, centralized one. Above all, this omnipresence makes it capable.

More Locally Managed Sources Create More Stability

Microgrids operate on a small scale, within neighborhoods or even city blocks. Energy is generated and transmitted locally and connected to other microgrids throughout the system with intelligent storage. But because it’s decentralized, it is more able to cope with disruptions to the system. At local, regional, and national levels these microgrids intelligently or automatically shift energy from where it is abundant to where it is scarce. This also presents monetization opportunities through time of day or location arbitrage, which helps to incentivize sharing to where energy is needed most. There is also no single point of failure, so a tree branch falling on an important wire can no longer cut power for millions of people. The system is therefore more resilient.

Sourcing Energy Locally Is Cleaner and Cheaper

Generating energy locally from renewable resources dramatically reduces or eliminates the toxins released into the environment. Harvesting energy from the sun that already shines onto roof panels can provide plenty of clean energy for a household. No need for so many acres for centralized power plants, or safety buffers around generation plants, water coolants, cutting through forests for power lines, or even skylines cluttered with poles and wires. Solar panels are also mostly recyclable due to their large proportion of highly recyclable glass, and the degree to which they can be recycled is improving quickly. 

Because of ever lower costs combined with increasing power per module, we can now access solar energy easily and affordably than ever. Solar systems can be purchased or financed by companies that also install them. This then becomes your power source, and you pay back the solar company—rather than the utility—through your monthly energy bill, until you own the system. This approach is being deployed from the commercial to the village scale, helping to bring solar to every corner of the world. Solar has become increasingly accessible, and other renewables are quickly becoming the same. 

Other renewables are also rapidly plunging in price, and ramping up scale globally. Add to this that we now live in a world of volatile and rising fossil fuel prices, thanks to geopolitical conflicts, supply chain disruptions, and the increasing costs and difficulty of finding new reserves. These trends will continue to help make the case that going green is not only the right thing to do, it’s also the lower risk and most profitable option. 

Excerpted with permission from What Could Go Right: Designing Our Ideal Future to Emerge from Continual Crises to a Thriving World by Justin Bean.