The Cost of Grid Worship
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) seems to be declaring a truce in a battle that has barely begun in an op-ed it co-authored with California utility company PG&E (yes, the same company that poisoned desert community groundwater with hexavalent chromium to pump natural gas). While I appreciate the need to exploit opportunities for common good when interests align, I see the NRDC's move as a losing bet for the environment because PG&E fundamentally opposes the opportunity we have today to greatly expand energy efficiency and distributed generation; when PG&E claims support for these, it is usually only because it has been ordered by California regulators to do so. A utility company's default preference is to build more centralized infrastructure, regardless of whether or not it is efficient or friendly to the environment. With our planet facing two intertwined crises - global warming caused by our greenhouse gas emissions and the growth of the hu...