
It's Time to Change the Narrative About Clean Energy - Osiris30
https://unreasonable.is/change-narrative-clean-energy/amp/
======
snowwindwaves
The article discusses re-branding the clean energy industry so it is as
American as the interstate highway system and the jobs that it provides are as
valuable as those in the automotive or coal mining sectors but didn't go so
far as to suggest what that branding could be.

A television ad campaign showing lots of blue and white collar workers at
solar farms, wind farms, and hydro plants performing various maintenance,
construction, and engineering activities might help more than the shots of
wilderness and nature that seem to be designed to appeal to environmentalists
more than the average joe. need a slogan and an audio signature (a la intel
bong or netflix drum) and clean green power could become the engine powering
America's future!

~~~
Brakenshire
Very good point, the political power of coal seems to be as much about
cultural concepts of masculinity as anything else. It already employs many
fewer people than alternative technogies:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-16/solar-
bea...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-16/solar-beats-coal-
on-u-s-jobs)

I also wonder whether the talk of coal being dirty and dangerous actually
boosts its appeal to some voters. At the least solar and wind need to be seen
as rugged. Maybe they should also play up scale, the latest offshore wind
turbines, for instance, are absolutely massive.

~~~
cpeterso
> I also wonder whether the talk of coal being dirty and dangerous actually
> boosts its appeal to some voters.

For example, see the attitudes around "Rollin' Coal". Practitioners cite
"American freedom" and a stand against "rampant environmentalism" as reasons
for coal rolling (aka "Prius repellent"). I'm not sure what argument one could
make to change a coal roller's mind.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal)

~~~
mikepurvis
Someone who's gone to the trouble of modifying their vehicle in that manner
may be beyond the point of reasonable discussion. On the other hand, that's
likely to be a pretty small proportion of people, overall.

~~~
51lver
You could certainly appeal to their appreciation for reliability. Consider
this, does an electric vehicle have ANY emissions reducing equipment at all
that one must maintain?

The unreliability of the emissions gear is usually what comes up when I talk
to diesel folks. Rolling coal is a fun extra for them.

Just musing now, but the diesel guys today seem to say a lot of the same
things the gas guys said in the 80s with their EGRs and cats and vacuum lines
galore under the hood destroying their reliability. Gas got variable timing
and direct injection, and is no longer so fragile. Maybe there's some room
left for innovation there, maybe not.

~~~
mitchty
> Consider this, does an electric vehicle have ANY emissions reducing
> equipment at all that one must maintain?

Yes, you need to keep it clean, drag affects all things equally, and dirty
anything means more drag.

------
amluto
I would also like to see the environmental groups and the left in general stop
branding coal as somehow immoral. How about instead trying to make coal
compete on level ground: tax its carbon emissions, tax its particulate
emissions, require real management for whatever waste it produces, and see if
any investors or inventors want to keep it alive.

If the CO2 emissions could be adequately captured, the particulates scrubbed,
and the fly ash turned into concrete [0], there may very well be a place for
coal for hundreds of years.

[0] Fly ash appears to be a pretty good replacement for a large amount of
Portland cement, and the latter also comes with quite a bit of CO2 emissions.

~~~
mobilefriendly
Unfortunately in the real world, with the best available technology, mining
coal is dirty, the particulates can't be fully scrubbed, and coal ash is
toxic.

~~~
agumonkey
There were some stories about a Chinese coal plant manager who made "clean
coal" (claims of near 100% clean). Never saw anyone debunking it. I wish to
know how true the claims are.

------
tynpeddler
This guy is right on, it's time to stop calling clean energy "clean energy".
That term makes it sound like the differentiating aspects of wind and solar as
compared to coal, gas and oil, is that the new stuff has lower carbon output.
That's true, but it's not the point anymore. Wind and solar are so efficient,
and so cheap that there's no need to market them on their environmental
impact, so dump clean energy. Here are some ideas I'm just throwing out there
for new terms:

New Energy

Tech Energy

Cheap Energy

Durable Energy

Efficient Energy

~~~
sxates
"Renewable Energy" maybe?

~~~
naasking
Or even "free energy" if you want to go really eye-catching.

Or "independent/freedom energy" to highlight that building up renewables
pushes independence from resources provided by foreign nations.

Along those lines, how about "secure energy" since energy independence is a
national security issue as well.

~~~
consumer451
> Or "independent/freedom energy" to highlight that building up renewables
> pushes independence from resources provided by foreign nations.

This should be large part of the narrative. I vote "Energy Freedom."

------
roenxi
Environmentalists are the _only_ power bloc in politics that isn't in favour
of cheap energy (their priority is obviously 'clean'). The irony of this is
that if it happens that clean energy is the most economic alternative, then
the small number of fanatics who want to make it a moral or political issue
are going to be the biggest roadblock. They'll probably still be ignored as
they have been for the last couple of decades though.

That being said, talking about the number of jobs might be politically savvy
but isn't actually a big picture advantage - energy production is a bit
special in my view and we don't want people working on that. We want people
working on ways of taking energy and transforming it into something useful.
The thinking here is a bit like observing the difference between being
unemployed and starving vs. unemployed with a $10 million inheritance - there
are good and bad ways to be unemployed. With cheap enough energy, anything is
possible.

~~~
mikeash
It seems to me that environmentalists want cheap energy, they just (rightly)
consider the environmental damage of traditional energy to be part of its
cost, and it’s expensive enough that it’s not actually “cheap energy.”

------
8bitsrule
"Clean energy could feel as all-American, cutting-edge, rugged, reliable,
resilient, and tough as fracking."

Feel, schmeel. Clean energy must be -thought of- as _manifestly_ the only
rational option ... one that is decades behind where it needs to be ... one
that is an _urgent_ priority.

The future of all life on Earth is at stake. We waited too long, and now it's
too late for PR, too late for 'gentle easing'.

------
philipkglass
The rapid growth of jobs in renewable energy is a temporary excursion, mostly
an artifact of current rapid expansion. At steady-state it will take fewer
people to supply electricity from a renewable-heavy electricity system than a
coal-heavy system. That's one reason that I am bullish on the long term price-
competitiveness of renewable electricity but skeptical that there will be
enough steady "green jobs" to offset jobs shed from legacy energy
technologies.

For example, the old coal plant in Nucla, Colorado is going to close by the
end of 2022.

[http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20161001/News05/1610099...](http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20161001/News05/161009993/0/FRONTPAGE/Coal-
fired-plant%E2%80%99s-closing-sends-shockwaves-in-Nucla)

...

 _the local job options could be pretty limited in far-western Montrose County
once two of its major employers close their doors, eliminating what are
currently 55 jobs at the plant and 28 at the mine._

...

According to the EIA, the Nucla plant generated 416,150 MWh in 2015 for an
average annual power of 47.5 megawatts:
[http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/527](http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/527)
That's an abysmal productivity per employee (or a fabulous job source,
depending on your perspective): 0.86 real annualized megawatts per employee at
the plant ; 0.57 megawatts per employee if you include the mining jobs.

(Since this article was published, the mine shut down. The coal plant still
operates for a few more years. The MWh generated at the Nucla plant also
declined sharply in 2016 and 2017.)

A well-sited utility scale solar farm like Desert Sunlight can produce an
average annualized power of 147 megawatts with just 15 full time employees,
for a ratio of 9.8 megawatts per plant employee.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Sunlight_Solar_Farm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Sunlight_Solar_Farm)

[https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/migrated/news/pressr...](https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/migrated/news/pressreleases/upload/Desert-
Sunlight-fact-sheet.pdf) ("Expected to create up to... 15 permanent jobs")

If you amortize the labor for construction over the lifetime of a solar farm,
it takes up the lion's share of labor-years associated with a given facility.
It's still lower per MWh than for legacy coal plants. It's also concentrated
up-front. It looks like solar produces a lot of jobs if you measure while new
American solar projects are booming and new American coal projects are nowhere
to be seen.

I don't intend any of these observations as a defense of coal or an attack on
renewable energy. I am thrilled whenever low-emissions sources displace dirty
fossils. But I keep writing comments like this on energy-and-jobs stories
because few writers have thought much about the _composition_ of the numbers.
The gleeful articles about how many jobs we can create with renewable energy
are at least missing some important caveats. The occasional conservative
attack on how labor-inefficient renewables are, like
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/06/01/jobs-
are...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/06/01/jobs-are-a-cost-
not-a-benefit-yes-even-for-renewables), likewise misunderstand the long term
labor implications of more renewables than fossils.

~~~
zamalek
> 0.57 megawatts per employee if you include the mining jobs [...] a ratio of
> 9.8 megawatts per plant employee [for renewable energy].

Another media take is that renewable energy will be costly for America (a
specific perspective is that it's a Chinese conspiracy); this tidbit clearly
shows that this perspective is false.

If America does not commit to renewable energy it will most certainly fall
behind the rest of the world where energy would be significantly cheaper, if
not "free" via taxation. As a generalization: local manufacturing won't be
able to compete with international competition (because international
competition would have lower energy costs), so there won't be anywhere else to
get work. There won't be money to import fossils (due to a lack of
manufacturing exports), so there won't be fossils to generate power. To make
matters worse, these two outcomes are mutually-reinforcing.

We can't compete with China right now because of cheap Chinese labor, imagine
how the manufacturing landscape would look with cheap Chinese energy thrown
into the mix. Renewables save more blue collar jobs in the long run (but fewer
energy jobs in the short-term).

In the long run, there is no way to save all the energy jobs. We need to start
looking for other ways to tackle the coming energy labor market crash and,
apart from UBI as a pretty flawed solution, I have nothing.

~~~
makomk
The main reason that renewable energy looks cheaper is that most countries
chose, as a policy decision, to count the costs of dealing with its
intermittent nature entirely against the non-renewables that have to fill in
the gaps rather than the renewable generation. That's why Germany has
wholesale electricity prices that regularly go negative thanks to green energy
and some of the highest consumer electricity pricing on the planet - the
renewables get the right to sell to the grid even when their power's not
useful and the non-renewable have to pay for this, and then ultimately
consumers have to pay when the non-renewables need to fill in for dips.

~~~
zamalek
The comparison drawn is MW/employee which is not relative to anything: it's
just how much power the plant is pushing, irrespective of whether its useful
as that specific time. It's a fair oracle. I purposefully stated "long run"
because none of this works until energy storage is also solved (which it
mostly is) or developed (which it definitely is not).

------
scottlocklin
This is a social class issue, as much as it is a 'branding' issue. The social
class that likes Subarus and Volvos, recycling, organic foods, and coffee with
foam in it (aka us, the hacker news types) has chosen 'clean energy' as a sort
of social purity test.

What he's saying does make sense; take it away from the bozos who brought us
... Facebook, 'Obamacare,' $4000 studio apartments next to a pile of human
excrement in San Francisco, and the rest of the disgusting mess that is modern
life, and it might be more popular with regular joes.

------
shmerl
I didn't get the point of anti-progress stance being perceived as American.

------
Eric_WVGG
I agree with a lot of what this guy says, but this bit rankled my nerves:

> In short, it doesn’t feel American. […] American is can-do, right-now, yes
> ma’am…

No dude, that is exactly the kind of polarizing attitude that you are accusing
the folks on the other… "side of the fence" (or whatever you want to call
that).

"American" is lots of things to lots of different people.

~~~
majewsky
Sure, but you're missing the point: Marketing campaigns aim for the average
sentiment, not the individual sentiment.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
I didn't miss the point. I explicitly said I mostly agreed with him.

