Senior editor and led technology writer for TheAtlantic.com, and visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, Alexis Madrigal, was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions about his eye opening and very engaging book Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology.
Alexis Madrigal describes a relatively unknown history or alternative energy production and use in the United States, how many good ideas were overtaken or lost, and how to avoid the to learn the lessons of the past could result in missed opportunities now and in the future.
Thanks to Alexis Madrigal for his time, and for his informative and comprehensive responses. They are greatly appreciated.
What was the background to writing this book Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology?
I was reporting a lot on green technology for Wired.com and GigaOm back in 2007 and I kept hearing all these nearly apocryphal stories about crazy renewable energy projects from the 1800s or the 1980s. I realized that no one had ever gone out there and tried to collect and make sense of all those stories.
Your book explores some startling examples of what are now seen as leading edge green technologies, having existed for decades or longer. What are a few examples of long available green technologies?
Well, the first cab company in New York used all electric vehicles developed in the 1890s. That was part of The Electric Vehicle Company’s plan to build out a nationwide electric cab service. Or take wave energy. By the early 1900s, people were already talking about how many people had tried and failed to build a working wave motor. Or solar heating, which has exploded in China. In the first half of the twentieth century both southern California and Miami had thousands of rooftop solar systems.
Why do most people consider green technology to be a relatively unexplored area of energy?
You know how people say that history is written by the winners? Well, the same is true with technologies. Those technologies that win tend to erase any memory that the whole thing was ever in doubt. A great example of this is that just about every major city in America had a functioning trolley system that provided public transportation for working stiffs. As cars became more prevalent, car companies (among others) pushed to have the trolley tracks torn out and paved over. I think that’s a perfect metaphor for why we don’t remember green technologies from the past that nearly, but not quite, made it.
Have people's ideas and perceptions of both the environment, and the necessity of developing green energy sources changed over time, or are people still tied to the mainstream fossil fuel energy sources?
Sure, the biggest break came in the 1960s for a couple of reasons. One, the U.S. started having to import more and more oil. Two, we had a bunch of the pollution problems that you see in China right now. Third, as more people moved to the suburbs, they could see the destruction of the rural landscapes just beyond where they lived. People started to really worry that we were destroying the country and the mainstream environmentalism movement got its legs.
I don’t know that anyone cares that much about where their energy comes from in the way that they care where their kids go to school. But I do think that we care about the places we live and the wars we get involved in and whether or not we’ll be able to go fishing in the lakes we did as children. And it’s those kinds of issues surrounding our energy system that matter. So I think as the impacts of our oil addiction continue to manifest and climate change’s grislier predictions continue to play out, we’ll see more people realize that we need to switch energy sources, even though it create some (or a lot) of problems as we transition.
Alexis Madrigal (photo left)
What happened to cause the already in use and viable alternative energy sources to disappear, and be replaced largely by fossil fuels and nuclear power?
Well, there’s viable and there’s viable. On the one hand, many green technologies worked in a vacuum. But technological development of big industrial systems takes time, and they’ve been competing against fuel sources that either had been in development for much longer (coal, oil) or were receiving many orders of magnitude more support from the government (nuclear power).
The other thing to note is that individual technologies need to fit into a system. So, if you’ve got a solar panel, ideally, you’d want it to be able to interact with the power grid in a variety of ways. Those kinds of issues require major social and institutional changes at power companies and in governments. Green technology proponents weren’t generally in a position to make those changes quickly, unlike their counterparts who worked on nuclear energy.
An example of the rise and sudden disappearance of a green technology was solar power. What happened to curtail its potential in the immediate post-World War II era?
Well, there are two main things. One is that we were awash in relatively inexpensive energy and the dream of cheap nuclear power made projecting that kind of energy surfeit into the far future seem realistic. Second is that “solar planning,” as it was called, required that developers build the suburbs differently. They would have needed to think more about the design of the houses to reduce the heating and cooling loads for the homeowners. But the homeowners were the ones paying for the energy over time, so they were more than willing to stick them with houses that traded good design for air conditioners and heaters.
Keep in mind, too, that utilities actively promoted using more energy for decades after World War II. The whole idea that you’d want to use less fossil fuel energy by using a solar plan was anathema to the corporate goals of utilities and not really worth it for people who had access to tons of cheap fossil energy.
In today's tight fiscal environment, is there a role for the government to take a leading part in alternative energy research?
Certainly. I think we should think about investing in energy as a national security issue. It should be funded come rain or shine, come high oil prices or low. We don’t realize how dependent we are on energy systems until they go down, and right now, we’re just not worried enough that our current fragile system will be able to hold up.
How can the profit motive help the private sector to explore the potential of green technology?
That’s already happening. But what you have to try to do is design government policies that help draw in private companies so that they invest in the technological development of new things rather than just feeding at the government rough.
What is the most important discovery made in green technology of the past century that can be developed further?
In terms of long-term potential, you’d have to say the photovoltaic cell which completes the fairly magical operation of converting the sun’s photos (its light, that is to say) into electricity directly. That’s an achievement, I think, on par with splitting the atom, although you can’t weaponize it, so it wasn’t announced to the world with quite the same bang.
What is the alternative energy and green technology outlook for the next decade or two?
It’s good. The only question is whether green technologies will be developed by China, India, and Brazil or here in the U.S. or everywhere.
What can the average person do to encourage the further advancement of green technology?
Honestly, the systems we’re embedded in are difficult to change as a single person. Political pressure goes a long way though. I don’t think people should blindly support green technology, but I do think they should take climate change seriously and tell their elected representatives not to ignore thousands of scientists in a variety of different fields who believe that we should start reducing the carbon dioxide emissions of our energy system.
What is next for Alexis Madrigal?
I’m really focused on The Atlantic Technology channel now, and I’m going to keep building that. I’ve started researching two new projects, one a book, the other a movie, but I don’t imagine they’ll be truly public until 2012.
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My book review of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology by Alexis Madrigal.
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