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CHAPTER 6 MANY CHOICES, ONE FUTURE FIG. 6-1. The arguments for marginal, incremental change are not convincing—not in this day and age. The future, after all, is not linear. History is full of sparks that set the status quo ablaze. —Peter Bijur (chairman and CEO, Texaco), World Energy Council keynote, Houston, September 14, 1998 INTRODUCTION From the coal that powered the mighty steam engines of the Industrial Revolution to the oil from Edwin Drake’s well and its many successors that became the lifeblood of transportation and commerce to the natural gas that has surpassed coal among America’s fuels, fossil fuels have transformed human civilization. They made possible massive cities and endless leafy suburbs, giant industrialized farms and vast water transfers, jet airplanes and teeming highways, and an everyday profusion of inexpensive goods casually shipped from all over the planet. Human ingenuity and ambition being what they are, industrialization and economic progress could still have occurred without fossil fuels,681 but the evolution of industrialization and of human history would have been very different, perhaps focused in different cultures,682 and probably slower and harder. Yet our economy’s quick hit from mainlining fossil fuels has come with rising costs to our vitality and safety. As we’ve seen, our energy system is exacerbating, more than shielding us from, the turbulence of what military planners call VUCA—volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. That’s true not just of our nation but of the world. As Thomas Friedman explains one example, “The world is caught in a dangerous feedback loop—higher oil prices and climate disruptions lead to higher food prices, higher food prices lead to more instability, more instability leads to higher oil prices. That loop is shaking the foundations of politics everywhere.”683 Fortunately, we are not doomed to eternal punishment, as Prometheus was for stealing fire for humankind. Nor does the dwindling of the old fire of fossil fuels mean a return to the Dark Ages. Instead, we can create a safer, stronger, fossil- free world by tapping into a far greater resource than fossil hydrocarbons. The real underlying fuel of America and of modern civilization is innovation and ingenuity. This book has taken us on a journey through many of the possibilities created by the flowering of innovation. We’ve seen how automakers and their suppliers are starting to build ultralightweight electric cars, how superwindows and integrative design can transform buildings from energy hogs to energy misers, how factories are making products with drastically less energy, and how giant companies and lone entrepreneurs alike are concocting new electricity grid designs and clever ways to learn when the next bus is coming. Even though we’re only on the cusp of this transformation to a fossil-free world—and even though the transformation will happen only if we put our might and will behind it—it is already creating vast new business opportunities and threatening entrenched industries. Who will become the Microsoft of making electricity demand nimble, for instance? Will micropower continue to push century-old central-plant designs off the market? Will insurgents continue to harry incumbent utilities? Will oil companies fade into history like buggy-whip makers and whalers, or will they become dominant players in clean energy and biofuels? As the greatest transition in industrial history unfolds, will America lead this transformation or trail behind others, condemned by old thinking and bad politics to lose the opportunity? We don’t know all the answers to questions like these. Nor can we predict innovations as yet undreamed of but whose distant rumble grows louder. As is always the case with technological and social transformation, the future may be far different from what we can conceive now. We are convinced, however, that transforming the energy system by Reinventing Fire will strengthen the economy and make the world safer, cooler, and better. Though our crystal ball may be cloudy, let us try to visit the future that would be created by following the paths charted in this book. Will that future meet our lofty goals? Let’s jump forward to a morning in America nearly 40 years from now. LOOKING BACK FROM 2050 The coffee smells the same and the view out the window of the house onto a quiet neighborhood looks fairly similar. But the house is so well designed and insulated that it needs no central source of heat. Its appliances and gadgets sip a tiny fraction of the power their predecessors used in the first decade of the 21st century. The house no longer suffers chills and fevers, nor does it need yesteryear’s noisy, costly mechanical equipment. Lacking those antiquated complexities, the house cost slightly less to build than the inefficient old one. Even though people now pay more for housing nearer their other destinations, they pay far less for energy and commuting, so, on the whole, housing takes up a smaller portion of people’s budgets than it did in 2011. Not only that, but our house has become a modest income-earner. Instead of paying over $100 a month for household energy bills, we get a monthly credit for the surplus electricity produced by the solar shingles on the roof, for the electrons that our Intergrid service provider buys back from the battery of our electric car to meet rare peaks in demand, and for the intelligence that invisibly coordinates that car’s charging and some of the home’s electrical services to use, buy, or sell power at the most profitable times, signaled to smart controls by varying prices based on real-time value. And when last year’s record ice storm knocked down the interstate powerlines, the lights stayed on because the community microgrid instantly unhooked, ran autonomously, then seamlessly reconnected when links were restored. Large-scale blackouts are a remnant of a bygone age. Though our electric auto is three times lighter, slightly cheaper to buy, and far cheaper to run than autos were 40 years ago, it’s safer, peppier, just as spacious, and even more luxurious—the fruits of fierce competition in new materials, manufacturing methods, propulsion, and design. But now that we organize our communities around people, not autos, we drive much less because the places where we live, work, play, and shop are nearly all in easy walking distance. Some of the old sprawl suburbs survived as electric autos made commuting more affordable, but many were redeveloped into clustered, mixed- use communities surrounded by new parks and farms. Many of us get the majority of our food from farmers we know within a 10-mile radius—and it tastes better. I’m one of the minority that still own personal cars. Most of my neighbors and both our teenagers get better access at lower cost from one of the guaranteed mobility services whose subscription packages integrate a rich menu of ways to get around—or not need to. Today, handheld telepresence is so good that going to see someone is truly optional, and if you choose to, your menu of ways to get there grows ever more diverse and attractive. Besides our family’s personal electric vehicle, my physical mobility options include jumping in an electric roadster from my carsharing program, catching a taxi or jitney or the ultralight rail two minutes’ walk away, or using a social network to hook up with other drivers headed my way. Right now, though, I notice on my smartphone that the silent fuel-cell bus will soon arrive at a nearby corner. So, time to leave the house. The bus ride will give me a chance to do some work over the free network, then grab a hybrid-electric bikeshare to complete my short but hilly journey to work. Once on the bus, other differences jump out. The roads are far less crowded than they were in 2011. The old zoning rules that ended up segregating housing by income level, causing isolation and dispersion, and requiring that you have a costly private car to get anywhere, are long repealed. Sprawl is no longer subsidized either: developers pay all the costs they impose on public infrastructure and services. Fewer trucks ply the highway. Fueling stations dispense biofuels and hydrogen, complementing the ubiquitous smart-charging points for electric autos. The air is clear and crisp. Engine growls have given way to birdsong. Traffic deaths, once a public-health menace as big as breast cancer, have become rare and injuries generally mild. Today’s carbon-fiber autos no longer rust. They still suffer occasional fender- bouncers, but real damage to their ultrastrong bodies is rare and maintenance almost nil. I dimly recall the days when autos needed to be fed over 20 kinds of fluids and consumables; now they need only wiper fluid. Wireless diagnostics and tune-ups in background make breakdowns almost unheard of. A mobile service van does the rare physical repairs at your home. Both the automaker and the certified app store offer wireless downloads to tweak everything from suspension to display styles, because the auto’s functionality is all in software. Reproduced all across America, these changes mean that liquid fuels for autos are down to a percent or two of their 2011 level, and nearly all those relics that require them run on advanced biofuels. The shiny old metal dino-juice-burning car-club relics that still use gasoline or diesel fuel refuel at their rallies from tank trucks sent by specialty chemical companies. In the 2040s, America even exported a little surplus domestic oil, but by now so many other countries have saved and displaced their own oil that it’s rapidly becoming like whale oil after electric lights—a curiosity hardly worth selling.

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