It was No. 2 on Indiegogo’s list of “7 campaigns that will make the world a little (or a lot) better” late last week – right after Jet Ski for Goats – but Solar Roadways was No. 1 in grabbing the cash.
The concept that proposes to replace the nation’s paved surfaces with solar panels and bring about the “end of our dependency on fossil fuels of any kind” cruised past its ambitious goal of $1 million and, at last count, was approaching $2 million, making it the most successful renewable energy crowdfunding campaign ever run up the Indiegogo or Kickstarter flagpoles.
It’s a shocking thing. I mean, have you been on an airplane recently? I have, and while peering out the window on approach to San Jose just a few weeks ago, I was gobsmacked by the realization that barely any of the houses down there have solar panels on their roofs.
Think about that. Rooftop solar is a proven clean energy technology. San Jose is sunny, liberal and tech-savvy. Grid electricity there is expensive. Yet according to the California Solar Initiative, impetus for much of the state’s existing solar installations, there are about 4,000 residential systems in San Jose – representing maybe 2 percent of homes.
And now we want to move on to trying to embed solar panels in roads? Like, we’ve finished the rooftop job?
Actually, I’m not surprised by the popularity of the Solar Roadways campaign. In going on four years of writing about renewable energy, I’ve witnessed a powerful desire to embrace the dazzling yet unrealistic, even as our commitment to the prosaic yet effective remains unfulfilled.
I remember a flurry of excitement for the “Solar Trap.” This was a revolutionary solar thermal technology that would operate at near 100 percent efficiency by use of a “high-temperature blackbody absorber,” whatever that might be; there was little in the way of documentation. For reasons unknown, the respected McClatchy news service, exciting people all over the Internet, wrote it up, saying the traps “could reorder the world’s energy landscape, end the global economic drag of soaring energy costs, and eventually curb greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for climate change.” (If they worked, the story noted, a caveat equivalent to a Roseanne Roseannadanna “Never mind.”)
In the gizmo category, you couldn’t beat the Solar Window Outlet. Stick it on your window, plug in your device, free power! It had its day in the sun, even if, as ReWire blogger Chris Clarke wrote, it “would need to violate a few laws of physics to deliver as promised.” (Chris, indefatigable in the face of the wacky, also punctured the beautiful but ridiculous solar orbs that were crowding my Facebook feed and that, incredibly, got a “Could This Glass Orb Be The Future Of Solar Energy?” headline from Climate Progress.)
It’s not just improbable solar ideas that distract folks. Although conventional wind power works very well and is constantly getting better, there’s always a steady stream of “revolutionary” turbine designs grabbing headlines. I remember one in particular, by a World War II vet. It was written up everywhere and people loved it. Never mind that an expert I talked to concluded: “It’s not significant in any way. It will be gone in a few years.”
Expert, schmetzpert, people don’t want to hear it. They want to love the crazy. It’s like what a commenter said recently about critics of the absurdly impracticable but highly publicized Solar Wind Energy Tower: “Anyone who thinks this is a bad idea doesn’t have any ideas other than continue to burn fossil fuels until we are extinct as a species. I say go for it, and it can’t nearly be as expensive as fossil fuel power plants.”
What’s striking about this viewpoint – one embedded in much of the support of Solar Roadways – is the assumption that we need a gargantuan technological breakthrough, a grand advance, in order to address our energy and climate-change challenges.
Have people not heard that wind energy projects are becoming increasingly competitive with new conventional power plants and that with continued investment could provide a substantial portion of our electricity production? And that solar PV has become vastly cheaper in the past few years, can be a big money saver for homeowners, and that with further progress on dull stuff like permitting and other soft costs, can do even better? And that efficiency improvements are there for the taking? Hello? Anybody out there?
By Pete Danko
