patrick.net

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So just how critical is continuity, then? And critical for whom? The U.S. grid sends 30 percent of its electricity to residences. As of 2017, 63 percent of those were single-unit, detached dwellings. Under Hawken’s plan in Drawdown, these houses will require battery farms and high-tension lines, and until they get them, they will probably draw power from natural gas at night. Thus, each household demanding continuous electricity marginally exacerbates the climate crisis. Perhaps, then, it is critical that we not store energy for these houses. At least, we should not do so in a way that hobbles the transition away from fossil fuels. We ought to consider waiting a few years for storage—enduring much more than six hours of downtime every year—for the sake of transitioning more rapidly away from fossil fuels. But few people have championed such residential intermittency. Why not?
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In fact, planned interruptions already happen elsewhere all the time. They are called “load shedding,” and households are the load. For a stretch in the late 1980s and 1990s, I lived in Harare, Zimbabwe, where the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) brought current to my house. Zimbabweans, many of whom were enjoying their first connection to the grid, used the abbreviation as a synonym for virility. The amount of current depended to a large extent on Kariba hydroelectric dam and reservoir two hundred miles away. The dam, in turn, depended on rain in the vast Central African catchment of the Zambezi River. In the 1980s, and probably due to climate change, annual precipitation began to oscillate wildly. When too little rain fell, the Kariba reservoir failed to reach a capacity, and Harare would lack electricity for months. So ZESA planned a rotation among the suburbs. Generally, that meant losing power for half a day per week. The power cut might have been shorter, had people not circumvented it by using their electric stoves immediately before or after. Still, rationing residences allowed hospitals and other essential services to keep running. Only the utility’s reputation suffered: “ZESA” became Zimbabwe Electricity Sometimes Available.
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Zimbabwe and Puerto Rico thus provide models for what we might call pause-full electricity. Admittedly, neither Zimbabweans nor Puerto Ricans chose to accept this rationing. And in Zimbabwe, official incompetence has reduced electricity to a nearly unbearable degree. Still, Zimbabwe’s past and Puerto Rico’s potential indicate just and feasible ways of living amid intermittency. With a pause, life goes on. By abiding that interlude—by shedding their load—people can preserve life near and far. If my town’s blackout will lessen, say, the force of Puerto Rico’s next hurricane, then, please, shed us half a day per week.
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What applies in the pandemic also applies—and also with desperate urgency—in the climate crisis. We can live with some intermittency and rationing—at least until batteries and other forms of energy storage are up and running everywhere. Hospitals certainly need 100 percent reliable equipment—perhaps some “continuous” businesses and cell towers too. And, in cities, elevators, streetlights, and subways must run reliably. One could imagine battery-assisted, semi-smart micro-grids connecting such infrastructure as well as home medical devices. But we don’t need the entire residential third of U.S. electricity consumption to run off lithium or to operate seamlessly. We don’t need Nest or permanent telecommuting. For a while, let’s eat a cold dinner here and there. Continuity costs too much. Climate change kills, and it kills vulnerable people first. Intermittency saves lives, and it saves vulnerable people first. Let the pause take its place in continuous climate activism.


https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/david-mcdermott-hughes-save-climate-give-demand-constant-electricity