by winston » Wed Mar 07, 2012 12:02 pm
GameChanger #5: The End of Cheap Oil Changes Everything by Hilary Kramer
As I mentioned earlier, I spend a good bit of time in airports. And while there is no shortage of things to complain about when you travel these days eg. crowded planes, zero service, ridiculous baggage fees, the biggest complaint I hear has nothing to do with crummy service.
It's the shortage of power outlets.
Look around any airport, and you'll find travelers huddled around the few electrical outlets available, jockeying to plug in their phone, laptop or iPad before their flight.
New energy sources such as hydro-fracking, Canadian tar sands, wind farms and solar power may grab all the headlines, but when it comes to solving our immediate energy crisis, the smart money is banking on the granddaddy of them all - electricity.
Just think about some of the GameChangers we have talked about today. iPads, smartphones, cloud computing servers, they are multiplying by the tens of millions, and every single one of them needs the same thing - electricity.
For the last 30 years, peak demand for electricity in the U.S. has grown 25% more than electricity transmission. And now that demand is going stratospheric thanks to our power-hungry gadgets.
About 40% of all electricity demand now comes from semiconductor-related technologies (your gadgets) and automated manufacturing. That's up from 10% in the 1990s, and it's expected to rise to 60% by 2015, just four short years from now.
But that rapidly surging demand is being delivered on a rickety, stretched-to-the-limits grid that has been patched together over the last century
President Obama's beloved BlackBerry gets charged every night using the same electrical grid that President Benjamin Harrison used 120 years ago to turn the first lights on at the White House.
The electrical grid that we rely on every minute of every day is now perilously close to disaster. That's why the sexiest thing happening in energy today is the smart grid.
Source: Game Changers
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"