A War of Position

admin March 6th, 2009

Everyday I am astounded to discover the strange and unexpected threads of journalism that are working their way into the ‘normal’ press circut. In the past four months, two of these have surprised me in particular: the running dialogue surrounding the decriminalization of marijuana and the depth of the discourse on ‘green’ social change. The marijuana debate may be something I will handle later, when the tone of the debate becomes more established; here I want to make a point about the notion of an American Green Revolution. (This article links the issues, though not to any real productive end).

Less that two decades ago, the idea that non-polluting energy sources would figure so prominently in forecasts, plans, and proposals was a fantasy. However, for all the celebration of the prominence of ‘green’ energy sources, another pervasive aspect of the debate has been overlooked: scale.

Indeed, virtually all popular discussion about the future of renewable energy is predicated upon the assumption of centralized generation by large-scale systems. For example, wind power is symbolized by images of massive farms, huge turbines dotting the coastline or prairie by both sides of the debate. Wind resisters cite noise, bird mortality, insufficient transmission capacity and, most commonly, view pollution in their arguments against farm construction; wind supporters muster ornithologists, acoustics experts and artists in their defense. The scale of the farms is not part of the debate. The same is true for nearly all of the most popular renewable energy systems. Geothermal, hydropower, hydrogen and bioenergy, the main renewables supported by US DOE grants, are all large-scale projects based upon a centralized generation paradigm, either because grants push research in that direction or because of the nature of the source, as in the case of geothermal.

In this sense, the renewable systems touted as saviors of modern society, glorified and worshipped through ad campaigns full of calming, green vistas, have more in common with coal power plants of the past than any energy independence utopia of the future. They continue the tradition of monolithic energy systems, bringing with them the attendant social and political characteristics, the political economy of the energy of the past. Langdon Winner refers to the social and political dimensions associated with a given physical energy technology as an energy regime.

To provide the variety of goods and services that sustain then, modern societies have created elaborate sociotechnical systems that link production, distribution, and consumption in coherent patterns. Within such systems, the activities of work, managcment, finance, planning, marketing, and the like are coordinated in highly developed institutional arrangements. These institutions, together with the physical technologies they employ, can well be characterized, borrowing a term from political theory, as “regimes” under which people who use energy are obliged to live. Such regimes of instrumentality have meaning for the way we live not unlike regimes in politics as such. It is possible to examine the full range of structural features contained in a particular sociotechnical arrangement and to identify the qualities of its rules, roles, and relationships.
(Winner 1982: 271)

The energy regime of the past, and the one large-scale renewables stand to replicate, is characterized by “extremely large, complex, centralized, and hierarchically managed” systems reliant on, and constantly reenforcing, a social contract that is predicated upon a highly developed technocrat class, the political will to support them and the positioning of ‘energy users’ as ‘energy consumers,’ purchasing from an amorphous energy system, “black boxes – input/output devices whose internal structure is of no particular public concern” (Winner 1982: 273;272). Winner observes that cost reductions offered by economies of scale has generated tactic support for the continuation this energy regime. Indeed, as the US electrical utility system became more centralized, the political system expanded to support it. The government response to public outcry over monopolistic utilities was a large, complex and hierarchically managed set of government programs, namely the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration. The cost reductions of economies of scale meant these programs only helped to reenforce the physical and social support structures of a centralized energy paradigm through construction of massive grid networks and generation facilities. Bundled with the spread of these massive physical systems came social systems, a subliminal indoctrination that energy systems only come in ‘extra-large.’

Regime Obesity

There should be little doubt that the relatively quick realignment of social systems in order to better support a centralized energy regime is directly linked to modern notions of affluence, that is, that ‘living well’ is being materially secure with high rates of consumption. Indeed, industry lobbyists and politicians rely on images of wealthy suburban families and the fabled ‘American dream’ to encourage support for the maintenance and expansion of these regimes. This wealth-energy association sets up a kind of feedback loop: the physical processes that produce material wealth are reliant on obese energy regimes and continued growth of output; production interests push for the resources and demand needed to grow (through political action and advertising), political and consumer advertising campaigns create and reenforce social norms encouraging increased consumption in the pursuit of material wealth; increased demand encourages expansion of the physical processes that produce material wealth, and around again. In this cycle, energy systems are a means to an end; the focus is on the product rather than production. Energy is commodified and efficiency, quantity and profitability become its central benchmarks.

While this chain of events and the reflexive interplay of the material and the social are clearly visible in contemporary contexts, they have their roots in the very birth of modernity. Beginning in the Industrial Revolution, dramatic scientific and technological breakthroughs meant (for the West) longer, disease-free lives whose sustenance relies less on soil and water than chemistry and biology (Byrne, et al 2002:271). Further, more recent advances in information technology have not only collapsed space and time but also reenforced the notion that modernity (and all the material benefits it bestows) stem from this unfettered pursuit of a ‘knowledge society.’

We have inherited the energy regimes of the Industrial Revolution, the “alliance of science, capitalism and carbon power,” and we must see them as part of this history of Western knowledge production and application (Byrne, et al. 2002:267). The separation of means and ends mentioned above is simply an extension of Western civilization’s veneration of objectivity and abstraction, central tenants of its ‘reason as religion’ approach to knowledge (Alvares 1992:74). The material benefits of a ‘knowledge society’ mask and override its other impacts; this is particularly true of the social order it engenders.

Lewis Mumford famously noted the dramatic reorganization of the social order around these principles of quantification: “Quantitative production has become, for our mass-minded contemporaries, the only imperative goal: they value quantification without qualification” (Mumford 1961:57). Thus the measure of an energy system is quantitative rather than qualitative; it is judged in terms of volume and efficiency rather than social or ecological impacts, let alone questions of ethics.

The result is alienation from energy. In Marxist terms, the social contract with energy we have inherited conditions us to judge energy in quantitative terms, that is, price per unit (exchange-value). However, when we compare the exchange-values of energy sources, we are necessarily assuming they are comparable in terms of their inherent use-value. However, when we speak of needing ‘energy’ to heat our house, get to work and run our TVs, it is not oil, gasoline or electricity we want, but warm houses, vehicular motion and entertainment, ‘real things’ characterized by their end-use, to borrow a phrase from Lovins (Lovins 1977:39). The user-as-consumer aspect of the Obese Regime implores us to simply seek the cheapest input to achieve the desired goal.

Thus, when the user/consumer lines up energy sources in terms of their exchange-value in order to choose based on price per unit, they abstract the use-value of those sources. Ten watts produced with coal has the same exchange-value as one watt produced by wind; coal is power is cheaper. The fact that the processes that produced those watts are qualitatively different is unaccounted for in the calculations.

Green Titans

The predominant energy systems of the past 100 years are part of an energy regime, a particular configuration of material, social, economic, political and psychological patterns and institutions. This particular regime is typified by its complex, centralized, and gigantic physical technologies and the technocracy, commodification, and hierarchy that support and reinforce their primacy. There is constant reciprocity among these factors, each one deepening the strength and logic of the others.

Enter renewable energy systems.

Given the breadth and depth of its influence, there should be little surprise that the Obese Regime would draw renewable energy technologies into its fold. This should not necessarily be thought of as a sinister act; modern society is so ingrained with the logic of the regime that it’s difficult to even imagine a new arrangement, let alone construct one.

Consequently, renewable energy systems are ushered in in the same, large-scale, centralized and complex form as their predecessors. The technophilic awe inspired by massive coal plants and nuclear reactors in previous decades is replicated in visions of vast wind farms, huge tidal capture systems, lonely desert solar arrays, a complex hydrogen infrastructure, and so on. The old energy regime is maintained in that we are simply exchanging our sources, in the same extra-large form, while leaving the rest of the Obese configuration intact. The unique opportunity to question our relationship with energy offered by the decline of fossil fuels is lost in a seamless swap of inputs.

There is, however, a critical problem raised by the incorporation of renewable technologies into an Obese regime. The inherent commodification of an Obese regime not only alienates the user/consumers from the energy production process but also the resources consumed in that process. While the physical technologies of the past did rely on organic sources, these were discrete inputs, that is, non-renewable sources. A commodified renewable energy not only maintains the alienation of the production process, but also its resources, in this case the Earth’s renewable, organic and omnipresent resources. The problem is not that the seemingly ceaseless march of commodification continues into the realm of basic ecosystem services, but that the economic logic of the Obese regime that accompanies commodification stands to erect barriers around these most pervasive of resources, these renewable energy commons.

Some might argue that by their very nature these resources cannot be appropriated or privatized and, thus, are not susceptible to the same capitalist economic logic as fossil fuels. To be sure, it is true that, for example, wind resources are not technically excludable, in that you cannot prevent others from using them, and that they are not technically rival, in that one person’s use does not affect the ability of others to do the same. However, when government grants, investment portfolios and sheer technophilia support the development of wind farms over distributed, small, home-based turbines, the cost incentives for research effectively privatizes the commons. It is privatization through economies of scale, appropriation through (unbalanced) competition.

Here we can see clearly the issue before us: the shift to renewable technologies is seen by many as inevitable, however, these technologies are no magic bullet. They are not any more likely to free us from the technocratic managerialism of centralized energy regimes than clean coal technologies are. Of course, they do have the potential to be implemented in a decentralized manner. But it must be remembered that renewable technology “can also become a corporate technology – the bases for solar power utilities, space satellites, and an ‘organic’ agribusiness comparable only to the highly chemicalized one so prevalent today” (Bookchin 1980: 131).

But, there are, of course, bright spots. I hope to point out some of these in the next few weeks. The first, and the shortest, is Smart Metering

Google’s jump on the Smart Metering bandwagon has popularized the idea that, gasp, we should be aware of how much energy we use (Info on Google and Smart Metering and Smart Grids here and here and here). While many parts of the nation are far from achieving widespread use of such meters, it is a step in the right direction. Establishing a way to put people in touch with their energy usage can break down the user/consumer barrier and instill a sensitivity necessary for further steps.

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