Jeremy Corbyn really understands what the future of the grid needs to be in an age of anthropogenic climate change.
A green energy system will look radically different to the one we have today. The past is a centralised system with a few large plants. The future is decentralised, flexible and diverse with new sources of energy large and small, from tidal to solar.
Smart technologies will optimise usage so that instead of keeping gas plants running just in case there is a lull in renewable generation the system fulfils needs by identifying the greenest, most local energy source.
There will be much more use of local, micro grids and of batteries to store and balance fluctuating renewable energy.
We will still need a grid to match energy supply with demand and import and export renewable energy abroad because the wind won’t always blow where energy is needed.
But it will be a smart grid, radically transformed.
What he is suggesting is not only practical now but also more reliable and more affordable than our present grid, according to the studies I’ve seen.
Interesting corollary to Charley’s post about clean energy policies moving through the State Senate and AG’s Office. I really think Corbyn sold this policy well. Instead of focusing on climate change, he is talking about lowering prices, creating jobs, and returning power (figuratively and literally) to people that was unjustly handed over to big business. This is the kind of fighting populism that will get the laid off steel worker sin Akron excited to vote Democratic again. Corbyn’s ability to cut into the inroads UKIP had made into the British working class was underrated at the time of the last election and is underrated today. It’s a model for Democrats, along with Bernie’s state of the union response. Return to our Roosevelt roots. That’s how we make liberalism great again.
My readings about the way communities make the transition to renewables is the necessity for municipal utilities to speed that process. Of course, the restructuring the Commonwealth did in the mid-1990s made it almost impossible to create new municipal utilities here but there is a community aggregation process that allows cities and towns to form a “buying club” for energy. It took only about 20 years before my town, Cambridge, began to use that to begin buying renewable electricity for its residents.
This is something that Corbyn clearly understands and underlines. It really is the best speech on energy by a politician I’ve read. So far.