The Dirty Energy Dilemma: What's Blocking Clean Power in the United States

'The American electric utility system is quietly falling apart. Once taken for granted, the industry has become increasingly unstable, fragmented, unreliable, insecure, inefficient, expensive, and harmful to our environment and public health. According to Sovacool, the fix for this ugly array of problems lies not in nuclear power or clean coal, but in renewable energy systems that produce few harmful byproducts, relieve congestion on the transmission grid, require less maintenance, are not subject to price volatility, and enhance the security of the national energy system from natural catastrophe, terrorist attack, and dependence on supply from hostile and unstable regions of the world. Here arises The Dirty Energy Dilemma: If renewable energy systems deliver such impressive benefits, why are they languishing at the margins of the American energy portfolio? And why does the United States lag so far behind Europe, where conversion to renewable energy systems has already taken off in a big way?
Corporate media parrot industry PR that renewable technologies just aren't ready for prime time. But Sovacool marshals extensive field research to show that the only barrier blocking the conversion of a significant proportion of the U.S. energy portfolio to renewables is not technological--the technology is there--but institutional. Public utility commissioners, utility managers, system operators, business owners, and ordinary consumers are hobbled by organizational conservatism, technical incompatibility, legal inertia, weak and inconsistent political incentives, ill-founded prejudices, and apathy. The author argues that significant conversion to technologically proven clean energy systems can happen only if we adopt and implement a whole new set of policies that will target and dismantle the insidious social barriers that are presently blocking decisions that would so obviously benefit society.'

- Summary Description of The Dirty Energy Dilemma: What's Blocking Clean Power in the United States, by Benjamin K. Sovacool (See Author Info below). Link to book at http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/C35540.aspx -- Available 10/30/08

About the Author:

BENJAMIN K. SOVACOOL is Research Fellow in the Energy Governance Program at the Centre on Asia and Globalization in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Government and International Affairs Program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. He investigated the social impediments to renewable energy systems for the NSF Electric Power Networks Efficiency and Security Program. He has worked in advisory and research capacities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Climate Change Technology Program. He is the co-editor with Marilyn A. Brown of Energy and American Society: Thirteen Myths (2007) and a frequent contributor to such journals as Electricity Journal, Energy Policy, Stanford Environmental Law Journal, and Daedalus.
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The above book looks to be a well-informed analysis of the troubled state of domestic energy infrastructure and policy, that appears from the description to be written from a combination of the liberal/identity perspectives: Liberal, in that the author seems to feel that success is about cooperation, but also identity, in that he speaks to the values, belief and norms of the actors as what is hindering this cooperation. A domestic level of analysis is employed: The author feels firmly that it is the breakdown of domestic-level institutional relationships that has perpetuated our failing energy policy, and stifled progressive action.

While I don’t know that the author does, one could further argue that an individual level of analysis could be fairly employed in this issue, since the President and his Secretary of Energy are the spokespeople for and promoters of energy policy. The lack of progress we have made in energy policy could be argued to be the product of their failed leadership.

If employing these perspectives and levels of analysis (especially the identity perspective and individual level of analysis), it seems clear that Obama would be the best candidate for effecting change in energy policy, because he is clearly committed to centering energy policy around the promotion of renewable energy sources. McCain, with his energy policy centered around non-renewable oil and questionably safe nuclear energy, simply can't make the claim that he will foster institutional changes towards progress.

--Heather Wegan