One of the more interesting changes that renewable energy will bring to New Hampshire is the localization of energy. As it is now, fuels are freighted (by truck or rail) into New Hampshire. For the power station in Bow, coal is shipped in by rail from out west. Most of our gasoline and gas is brought in by sea. What’s remarkable is that it all travels a good distance. Other than wood (and some nuclear power at Seabrook), New Hampshire doesn’t produce any of the material we burn to generate power. But that is changing and will likely change a lot in the next few decades. And we should do as much as we can to encourage and develop that.
Advances in technology are making it affordable and practical to generate power everywhere. From rooftop solar panels to larger solar farms to hydro power to wind turbines the next advances will mean that power won’t be generated at power stations as much as it will be generated everywhere, stored locally and fed back into the grid as homes, businesses, government and institutions need it. That’s a much safer, more economical and more environmentally friendly system than the ones we have now.
Going green shouldn’t be a Republican thing or Democratic thing. It’s a thing that makes us more independent, keeps money local, is safer and makes us all healthier.
Our local and state governments should be doing everything they can to help foster this new potential world of New Hampshire energy independence. How can we put rooftop solar panels in every home where it makes sense? How can we add solar panels to schools, warehouses, airports and former dumps? How can we turn roads into energy collectors? How can we harness the wind and power of the ocean to generate power? We should be supporting local projects like this even if they are just experiments now. Is every dam in New Hampshire collecting electricity? Is every parking garage generating electricity?
One of the biggest challenges with the lion’s share of renewable energy is that we just can’t turn it on or off like we can with traditional power plants. With solar we may have an abundance of power during the day but none at night. But what if an affordable way to store that energy was developed? A startup in Somerville, Mass., says they have developed an inexpensive way to store electricity in an iron battery. Commercial use of this technology may be 10 years away, but it represents hope and perhaps the future of what we could be able to achieve: real energy independence. And our state and local governments should be leading the way with projects of their own and incentives to help homes and businesses convert to renewable energy and experiment with ways to make it work. That seems like something everyone could get behind.