Reorienting the Economy to the Rhythms of Nature: Learning to Live with Intermittent Energy Supply

• Date: 01 May 2020
• Author: Kris De Decker
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12333
• Published date: 01 May 2020

Part III

Generation, Transportation and Education

As we move into an energy-challenged future, our ability to rely on cheap energy to create

convenient ways of living will be called into question. We may need to organize our economic

life on a seasonal basis, as our ancestors did. We will need to rethink daily travel and the pos-

sible substitution of local products for distant ones. In coping with these changes, it will be

essential for more citizens and policy-makers to have a wide-ranging understanding of energy

issues; energy provision will go beyond technical issues for engineers.

Most motorized transportation today is powered by fossil fuels. Cities have been built or

transformed with as much or more space devoted to vehicles as people. Yet a large number

of trips are short enough for walking or cycling, and even much of what we call “freight” can

be delivered by bicycle within cities. Long-distance and heavy freight is more challenging.

Maritime shipping was once powered by wind, and we may need to revive such ancient tech-

nologies, though that will likely mean the annual volume of goods shipped across the oceans

will drop substantially.

In transitioning to renewable electricity generation and distribution systems, we are likely

to face many new challenges with implications for economics, politics, and organization of

work and home lives. Specialists in electrical engineering will have an important role to play,

but other students will need some basic knowledge of energy science, and electrical engineers

will need to understand the social implications of their work. Developing a renewable energy

system will also call into question the ownership models built for electrical utilities during

the past century of industrial capitalism. Solar radiation is a “commons” resource. Our legal

traditions still retain the centuries-old framework of “trusts” that can be used today to set up

“solar commons” for community bene t.

Reorienting the Economy to the Rhythms of

Nature: Learning to Live with Intermittent

Energy Supply

By Kris De DecKer*

AbstrAct. In much current thinking about the necessary and rapid

transition to a carbon-emissions-free energy system, there is implicit

acceptance of the high-tech, high-energy nature of the current

economy. But by asking deeper questions about this economy, we

reveal new opportunities as well as new challenges. First, throughout

most of history, both production and consumption were dramatically

influenced by the weather, and activities were undertaken or curtailed

according to varying availability of energy. In the future, if we again

adjust energy demand to such intermittent supplies wherever and

whenever possible, we can nevertheless benefit from many scientific

and technological advantages that our ancestors did not have centuries

ago. Second, in the pursuit of highly energy-efficient machines that

might become new sources of highly concentrated energy, we have

begun to rely on “clean energy” machinery made in significant part

from non-recyclable materials. With our current generation of wind

turbines, for example, we have sacrificed sustainability in the pursuit

of a supposedly renewable-energy system. By contrast, if we reduce

our need for always-on energy sources by adjusting energy demand to

intermittent energy supply, we can greatly reduce the overall energy

infrastructure needed, and we will face less pressure to sacrifice

sustainability.

Introduction

There are two assumptions that have become so basic to the cur-

rent high-tech and high-energy economic system that they are sel-

dom even thought about. First, we assume that natural environmental

rhythms should not and cannot limit our activities. We expect to be

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 79, No. 3 (May, 2020).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12333

© 2020 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

*Publisher and writer of Low-Tech Magazine, online since 2007 and now available in

print as well. He lives in Barcelona, Spain. Email: kris@lowtechmagazine.com