Go Big Green

Sustainable energy isn’t going to become the standard until it makes economic sense for people to turn from fossil fuels to renewable sources. One way to bring down costs is to use economies of scale to produce energy from renewable sources in large proportions.

The idea is similar to the way we produce energy from fossil fuels right now. People don’t have coal-burning generators behind their homes; they are connected by wires to a power plant. There are definitely more opportunities to capture clean energy in small batches via solar panels, but there’s no reason that communities can’t take advantage of large-scale energy production projects. The costs of individual solar panels or a wind turbine are still prohibitively expensive and geographically unfeasible for most people. A central source of renewable energy makes sense can make sense for individuals, communities, businesses, and institutions.

In today’s New York Times, Matthew Wald takes a look at large-scale alternative energy projects.

It’s all about the economics.