Here’s the 60 Minutes piece everyone is talking about, presented just so you have context:
Okay, now I’m going to switch it up and not talk about Bloom itself, favoring a wait-and-see approach. I’m not even going to talk about Google Energy (which makes perfect sense in the context of their networking strategy — “own the grids”).
I’m more interested in the implications of distributed power generation. The way I see it there are three very interesting things poised to happen:
- Canada’s green energy advantage is slipping away. Lack of investment by several past governments who adopted a “hydro is the future, and we’re already there” strategy have possibly crippled our theorized future as a clean energy provider. How will we get hydro when all those ugly-as-sin transmission lines come down?
Still, fuel cells are powered primarily by fossil fuels. This means unhealthy projects like the tar sands and Mideast interventionism will remain the order-of-the-day, but at a lower level of emissions.
- Despite Doerr’s polite, political assertion that the electric utilities have nothing to fear this might be the beginning of the end for them. Home fuel cells would make their business model (generate dirty power far away, transmit it into cities and distribute) totally, instantly obsolete.
And a sky without so many G-D poles and lines would make photography a heckuvalot easier.
- “Bloom box” is a hilarious name because that’s a cannabis grow-op term — the high-energy box you put your plants in to flower. Since one major way the police bust grows is by tracking all of our energy consumption, moving the power plant in beside the cannabis plant will protect growers even more from the forces of prohibition and help shield all British Columbians from continuing violations of our privacy.
IIRC, cannabis breathes CO2 just like any other plant, so a fuel cell power plant in your grow might actually make your product better — carbon-sink the emissions right into the bud. Delicious!
The police may respond by using FLIR devices, as they already do illegally in the ‘States. FLIR is a technology that, essentially, lets the cops watch you inside your house from outside. It should be super-illegal for police to use.
These are just some of the multiple simultaneous revolutions that distributed energy generation will allow. I can see why they say its market is measured in “trillions” — just about the only companies unaffected by it will be Big Oil.