The electricity grid in the United States may be the largest, most pervasive technological system ever constructed to meet the needs and comforts of human beings (Nye 1997). Although it is less than 150 years old, the electricity infrastructure of this nation is ubiquitous; power lines stretch across deserts, forests, states, highways, and the entire nation in order to provide electricity to residences, businesses, and communities. The electricity carried by these transmission lines is generally produced using fossil fuels (mostly coal; see US Energy Information Administration 2012) and is most commonly generated at a monstrously large facility (a coal plant, a nuclear facility, or a hydropower dam). Our electricity infrastructure was constructed to carry enormous amounts of electricity across vast geographical expanses, based on the massive generation facilities and concentrated fossil fuel based energy sources that defined the system and its use. However, there are increasing concerns regarding the sources of our energy supply. Many of these concerns are related to climate change and how carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels contribute to rising global temperatures and the climate instability of the planet (Brown 2003). Additional concerns include the host of other environmental damages caused by the use of coal (Epstein et al. 2011), nuclear energy (Slovic et al. 1991), and hydro-electricity (Dincer 1998); other debates involve worries about nearing or reaching peak energy supplies (Brown 2003), energy security (Yergin 2006), and the aging transmission grid (Amin 2003). For a multitude of reasons, many would agree that it’s time to rethink our dependence on fossil fuel based forms of energy and move toward alternative, renewable energy sources (Brown 2003, pp. 116–135). The good news is, the renewable energy industry gets bigger every year, with more energy from renewable sources being produced, sold, and used (Sherwood 2011). Some US states have enacted renewable energy standards requiring that a certain percentage of their electricity supply come from renewable sources. Tax incentives, subsidies, and various forms of rebates, in financially incentivizing renewable energy adoption, also provide evidence that we are indeed moving in the direction of clean, renewable sources of energy.
Renewable Energy: Non-environmental Reasons to Make the Transition