As Virginia evolves toward a Knowledge-based wealth creation system, we need to take a fresh look at state-level energy policy. As Alvin and Heidi Toffler observe in their book, “Revolutionary Wealth,” America’s energy economy has not adapted as quickly as dynamic sectors of the economy.
Industrial America was built on the back of cheap fossil fuels and an immense infrastructure for distributing energy around the country. Costly and overdependent on imported oil and gas, the American energy-distribution system includes 159,000 miles of electrical-transmission lines and 2 million miles of oil pipelines that, because they are heavy fixed assets, are hard to alter in response to rapid change.
The United States is rushing to build an advanced knowledge-based economy but remains saddled with an industrial-age, legacy energy system politically defended by some of the world’s biggest and most influential corporations against a growing, growling public demand for fundamental change in the system. The conflict is not usually posed in these terms, but it is, in fact, an example of Second Wave vs. Third Wave warfare.
Unfortunately, the Tofflers provide even fewer specifics about a “Third Wave” energy sector than they do about the “Third Wave” transportation sector, so it is not clear what they have in mind. Allow me to hazard a few guesses.
A Third Wave, knowledge-based energy economy would, first and foremost, consume energy far more efficiently than we do today. Secondly, it would be more decentralized than the system we have today.
We would see more “distributed generation,” relying less upon giant power plants connected by gargantuan power transmission lines and more upon local, small-scale power generators and energy sources. We would see more “smart” meters that allow consumers to track their electric consumption minute by minute, not month by month. We would see rate structures that reward consumers for conserving energy or for shifting consumption to off-peak periods of the day and off-peak seasons. Similarly, we would see rate structures that require businesses and homeowners to pay their full locational costs — if it costs more to supply energy to a certain location, they would pay more.
A Third Wave energy economy would support the research of promising new technologies and remove barriers to the use of “green” fuels such as solar, wind and bio-fuels (but it would allow market mechanisms to dictate the pace at which such technologies were adopted).
A Third Wave energy economy would seek not only to develop more gasoline-efficient automobiles but would encourage Virginians to drive less by developing more energy-efficient human settlement patterns — i.e. human settlement patterns that would allow people to fulfill their needs with fewer and shorter automobile trips.
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