What Would it Take to Turn our Entire Energy Grid “Green”?

The world is already powered by renewable energy (the Sun). Third Option has a plan to plug into that power, by unplugging the power of those leading us astray.

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By Robert Simmons

Step One: A Hostile Takeover (of the Corporate Kind)

The US power grid is a complex network of generation, transmission, and distribution, and unfortunately, 92% privately owned. The Federal Government only has its hands on 8% of total energy transmission. Nearly 80% of power generation is divided among 192 Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs), and 2,800 independent power producers. After that, there are still 2,900 Publicly-owned utilities and cooperatives, but they only account for 12% of total transmission.

Trying to get all this under control makes one begin to appreciate the convenience of totalitarianism. In our so-called Democracy, two options present themselves; the Economic option is to seek Economic  Totalitarianism through a“hostile” financial takeover, basically achieved by building around the current grid, then pricing the competition out of the market. The Governmental Option is to declare some sort of Eminent Domain over the production of Electricity in General. To be safe, it is probably best to employ both methods.

The only entity financially powerful enough to run the other energy grid owners out of town is the federal government, and they still own 640 million acres in which to build wind and solar plants, or even hydro-electric dams, if this option is still viable (hydro-power has fallen out of favor with environmentalists). We the taxpayers could scrounge together a few trillion bucks from underneath our couch cushions, or better yet, The Third Option suggests we re-instate a National Public Bank and loan ourselves all the money we will need. You can read more about this plan here. 

For government to get involved, there would have to be a good reason, like protecting the Earth’s ecosystems from changing climate before they collapse and take us with them, for example. If that isn’t enough, maybe we could claim that electricity is essential to life, and thus falls under our unalienable right to life. Since it is our government that made this “unalienable rights” claim, they would need to enforce it by taking over the energy grid. If anyone balks at electricity being an essential need, perhaps we could shut down the energy grid for a couple weeks, then ask the question again.

Another conversation starter might be to talk about the money all of us would make, and all of us would save. Again, The Third Option has run the numbers, and although the private sector claims these new green energy methods will be too expensive for the general public, in reality, if we remove all the profit-seeking, it appears we could keep energy consumption to a very modest 10 cents per kilowatt hour (currently we all pay around 12-13 cents per KwH). This alone would save households (who use nearly 11,000 KwH’s of electricity a year) $324 or more on their yearly Energy Bill. 

The real closer in this deal would be explaining that if we run the cost of building our green energy grid through a National Public Bank, the eventual $4.42 Trillion loan would be paid back in 30 years by simply paying 10 cents for every KwH, and yield the American people $7.6 Trillion to split among themselves (National Banks are owned, operated, and funded by the people). In case you were wondering, your share of this would be about $23,000. When running the numbers, it turns out that the grid cannot help but also bring in a residual income of nearly $40 Billion a year, that could be used for whatever purpose the people see fit.

Okay. Let’s say you are convinced. We re-instate a National Public Bank. We raise carbon emission taxes up so high it drives oil and coal and fracking out of business. Then, within 8 years, we completely rebuild our energy grid, and put the states in charge of hiring their own residents to fill the many new green energy jobs produced. Perfect. So what would the logistics look like on such a project?

What We Have Right Now

Here is what our energy grid looks like currently:

• Solar – 27.2 gigawatts of solar power capacity [enough power to supply about 6 million homes]
• Coal – 285 gigawatts of coal capacity (this is our cheapest form of energy, only $25 per megawatt hour]
• Natural gas – 440 gigawatts [see a capacity of 440 gigawatts]
• Nuclear capacity  – 98 gigawatts 
• Hydroelectric capacity – 80 gigawatts 
• Wind power – 74 gigawatts [see 74 gigawatts of installed capacity]

TOTAL = 1004.2 Gigawatts (current estimate is 1,100 GW)

In order to make our Energy Grid green in eight years, we would need to boost our solar energy by 50 GW a year, our wind energy by 16 GW a year, and (if allowed) our hydro-electric power by 8 GW a year. This would get us to 740 GW of net generation a year, which leaves us nearly 300 GW short; this is why we will need our nuclear scientists to get their stuff together and build us something safe and clean, which they are very close to achieving. More on that later. We will also look at hydrogen options, among others.

SOLAR POWER

Needless to say, we will need to form businesses around the making of cells and panels here in the US, which is good for the job market, and also gets America back to being more self-sufficient. We are significantly better as a nation when our individualism comes from self-sufficiency and not self-centeredness.

There is one more business we will need to create: battery storage. Since solar panels produce electricity for only an average of five to six hours each day, Lithium-ion batteries are needed to store and deliver energy for the other hours of the day, or as back-up power, should other sources fail to generate the required electricity for any reason. Our government facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratories has an aluminum-ion battery that could replace Lithium-ion technology if necessary. Elon Musk’s Tesla 100MW/129MWh Powerpack project in South Australia managed to provide the same grid services as regular power plants, only cheaper, quicker, and with zero-emissions, so if Musk wants to help Americans with his many innovations, we are of course quite willing to listen.

WIND POWER

Over the course of a year, wind turbines will typically generate about 24% of their theoretical maximum output (41% offshore), which is its capacity factor. More spatially efficient than solar, six megawatts of rated capacity can be generated on the same 4.5 acres that would house only one megawatt of solar power. 

Smaller “wind trees” placed on individual homes can also help bring in extra electricity, at a very reasonable cost. They really don’t look much like actual trees, but either do those cell phone towers dressed up as pine trees. Are they less ugly, or just a different kind of ugly? Difficult to say.

HYDRO POWER

The ocean can produce both thermal energy from the sun’s heat, and mechanical energy from either the tides, or from wave power. Tides are driven by the moon’s gravitational pull, while waves are more wind-driven. The heating of the ocean’s surface can be harnessed into electricity conversion by using either a closed or open cycle, or a combination of both (a “hybrid” system). All electricity generation is ultimately created by turning a turbine that activates a generator. Our oceans are probably where we will eventually go for more energy generation; wind power is more efficient, the ocean surface is massive (for harnessing solar energy), and without pissing off the surfers, perhaps power could also be collected near the shore if necessary.

NUCLEAR POWER

Even with our ambitious plans to use the above green energy sources, we fall quite a bit short of our total energy output goal. Nuclear power has become a dirty word, but scientists have been working quite a bit to create nuclear options that are “walk away safe”, meaning there is no way a breach could lead to any significant release of radioactivity. 

The reactor with the most promise is the Molten Salt Reactor (MSR). MSRs are the safest design, and even burn all their radioactive byproducts as well, through fission, which become physically bound to the hardened coolant, so could never escape the reactor site. MSRs can be used to dispose of current stockpiles of nuclear waste by using those stockpiles as fuel. Even stockpiles of plutonium can be disposed of this way. This immediately makes MSRs invaluable. Meanwhile, they are capable of using nearly all of the fuel in their fuel rods, where the old conventional reactors typically used only 3-to-5% of their available energy.

These reactors can also use uranium-238 as fuel, which makes up 93.3% of all natural uranium. Conventional reactors use only uranium-235, which makes up a minuscule 0.7% of natural uranium. Variants of these reactors can even burn thorium as a fuel source, which is safer and more efficient than mining uranium. Currently, there are more than 700,000 MT of depleted uranium in the United States. This is a huge reserve that, with MSR reactor technology, can be directly used for energy production.

THE CASE FOR HYDROGEN POWER 

While liquified hydrogen tankers or even high pressure “tube trailers” currently transport hydrogen using our system of roads, the best way to scale up our use of hydrogen is to build pipelines designed to distribute and deliver it in much larger volumes. With a National Bank, the more we invest, the more we profit together.

THE POWER GRID ITSELF

The U.S. electrical grid has been called “the largest interconnected machine on Earth”: it is 200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 5.5 million miles of local distribution lines, linking thousands of generating plants to factories, homes and businesses. At this point, many of the components of the grid are 30 to 40 years old, and need replacing soon.

High-voltage direct current (HVDC) technology is a new affordable option, and is more efficient when used for the long distance delivery of current, which will be necessary in order to get solar or wind power, for instance, to remote areas of the country. HVDC power can also be buried underground, making it less problematic than above-ground lines that must crisscross through private property.

With our new energy system being rebuilt “green”, through a National Public Bank, lesser taxes can be turned into eventual dividends, while We the People would save hundreds of dollar each year in electric bills, help save the planet, and create many new local jobs. Additionally, important future innovations in green energy, rather than getting bought out and buried by private competitors, would instead be brought to light, and potentially become useful solutions we can all invest in together.