The Future of Energy It could be a long road ahead. May 7th, 2008 E-mail to a friend
This morning, my teenage step-daughter declared she was going to take
the school bus for the remainder of her senior year in high school:
“The cost of gas is too high to waste MY money driving to school, I’d
rather use my gas money to see my boyfriend every weekend.” As my jaw
dropped, she yelled “stop looking so surprised,” and then scolded me
for having purchased a diesel Jeep three years ago.
“I
thought you were a smart environmental guy," she said, "but you're
paying much more to drive your car than I am for my totally awesome
Tiburon, no matter what mileage you're getting.” With diesel $1/gallon
MORE than regular, thanks in part to increasing global demand for it, I
do feel pretty dumb these days, and increasingly poor.
She
concluded with, “I’ll only leave you alone if you start getting your
fuel from the McDonald’s french fryer… Oh, by the way, am I old enough
to get a gun?”
Within this short and totally unexpected conversation, several truths had become evident:
1.
Environmentalists don’t always make good decisions (my other offspring
say it might just be me, but I suspect I have company).
2. The
markets will not always respond in ways that we predict or want (no
bio-diesel stations have sprung up within 25 miles of my house, though
my car was marketed as being bio-diesel ready: “All you have to do is
create the demand, and it will come,” I thought. Not!).
3. Our
children are adapting to the changing world faster, and more
matter-of-factly than their parents. In their easy self-righteousness,
when they decide to act, they will probably start dragging other less
secure people on heretofore unknown paths, hopefully to sustainability.
4.
Few people change habits when told to; many more change when they feel
they have to or if they see immediate, personally-relevant results. (I
have crooned about the benefits of the compact fluorescents now
installed throughout our home, but get laughed at when it takes longer
to illuminate our paths than the prior incandescent bulbs, because
nobody is seeing a big difference in our electric bill… who really
tracks kilowatt hours?… and my new family has more fun cajoling me than
monitoring our CO2 impacts.)
5. Making energy decisions doesn’t
have to be devastating. My step-daughter cares very much about looking
fabulous (which doesn’t take much) and being hot. She is okay doing the
school bus routine, because saving money is smart and cool, and does
not threaten hot.
6. Now about the gun question… young people
may always be passionate and sometimes idealistic, but they are just as
likely to feel that the world is dangerous and out to take advantage of
them, or worse. Her half-serious request for a gun was based on a
desire to protect herself, and a fear that with both energy and food
prices increasing so dramatically and in unison, there will soon be
wars to secure our own critical resources, so we better start learning
to protect ourselves now.
As an environmental engineer, I know
that the consumption of carbon-based energy resources (e.g. coal,
petroleum, natural gas) is the biggest human contribution to measurable
atmospheric changes, and that responsible scientists are increasingly
convinced these changes will lead to massive environmental and societal
disruption during this coming century. For the Awakening Consumer, this
is agreed-upon truth, and a reason to act, but naysayers seem to have
sowed enough doubt to keep the rest of the population from acting
decisively. Thus, marketers who want to grow their product’s success
based on its energy platform may have to tap other emotions than
“saving the planet” to be hugely successful, at least until the
doubters are silenced (which could be only after more climate
disasters).
It’s not that highlighting the source of energy used
in a product is bad. After all, doesn’t a “sunscreen made from solar
energy” or a “paper milled from the energy in wind and water” have an
appeal that marketers can create memorable campaigns from? The problem
is that such cutesy approaches create an opening for competitor and NGO
attacks on the sincerity of the claims. What if the sunscreen has palm
oil components that come from recently clear-cut rain forests and
plantations that exploit child labor? What if the paper is from
old-growth forests? What if the energy claims are not based on direct
sourcing throughout the entire supply chain but are instead from the
purchase of Renewable Energy Credits just for the final packaging
operation, where the uses of those funds are not even audited? Then the
marketer can be accused of creating a veneer and providing negligible
benefits to the consumer, who is once again likely to feel taken
advantage of… not a reason in itself for my step-daughter to buy a gun,
but a contributing factor to the cynicism that stops growth of truly
green products and impedes movement of consumers and companies down
sustainable paths.
One way out of this dilemma is to promote a
“carbon economy” that operates in parallel to (and sometimes at odds
with) the monetary economy, where a certifiable carbon profile for any
product or service begins to demonstrate the same motivational
properties as its cost in dollars or euros. Yet we have no idea how to
convince the bulk of consumers to voluntarily track their own carbon
profile and how to reward those who adhere to limits; this is where
market research should start today. Unlike the monetary economy, it is
difficult to foresee carbon sale days… “We’ll lower the carbon
allotment on this product if you buy it now.” We do, however, see it
creating some interesting dilemmas for the classical environmental
movements. For example, products made in areas serviced by nuclear
power will have significantly lower carbon profiles than those in
coal-burning states, even if the former does not use energy as
efficiently as the latter.
The marketplace is going to continue
to be noisy; that means going forward may mean compromising on some
principles, and that awkward and unforeseen steps must still be taken
on the path to sustainability. A battle that is now beginning to be
fought is the competition for carbon between energy and food. Maybe we
can create energy without carbon, but life without carbon is simply
impossible. The diversion of food stuffs like corn, soy and palm oils
into the energy markets is disrupting food prices and driving even more
people into abject poverty. The solution is to accept that once-good
ideas, like biodiesel, may ultimately create graver problems than they
claim to solve, albeit in different areas (e.g. hunger vs. global
warming).
Getting to a world that is diverse, prosperous,
healthy and with adequate food and energy for all, will require that we
prioritize and compromise. If the largest risk to the biosphere today
is climate change, and the largest risk to its human component is
hunger, then we may need to just balance these against each other and
accept other lesser, perhaps easier-to-contain risks like low-pressure
nuclear power plants and controlled pesticide use. And to reduce the
noise the consumer hears (more noise = less desire to act), we will
need to be consistent and honest in the way we talk about priorities,
not as the end game, but as temporary steps on a long journey.
Hopefully, if we are honest that it may not be possible to do
everything to save the planet all at once, but that it is important to
take some steps now, and other steps tomorrow, we can eliminate
feelings of being manipulated. Maybe then I can also convince my
step-daughter that the world is not as dangerous as she fears. So far,
she isn’t buying my argument.
by Stan Kaczmarek
An environmental engineer, Stan Kaczmarek has been helping Fortune 100 companies conduct their affairs in a way that's good for both business and the planet for over 30 years.
