- January 1978 RAIN Page 5 Big Business Loves A. T. technologies where they either give a boost to the economic well-being of an area or lower costs- in either case making more money available for ·the purchase of their products. Sound at all familiar? Take another look at solar energy developments in the U.S. What's the pattern? You have a situation that clearly lends itselfto decentralized, at-home application and local production and installation. You have individuals developing and refining the simple technology required and fighting the massive efforts o_f entrenched energy companies, financial _{nstitutiO!}S and government that have done their best to prevent the rapid conversion to solar energy. Now that the public has begun to demand application of solar .energy, you find the government (ERDA in this case) giving massive amounts of our tax monies.to pay large corporations to reinvent these already proven technologies. What is at stake is not inventing the technology but paying the corporations to develop their capabilities to produce it and also to receive credit from the govt':rnment for inventing it. So the government promotes and pays big-business to take over a new field that is developing quit~ well without its "assistance." The next step is in process now. It is easier and more convenient for business to let government leg~slate the successful small producers out of business rather than have to compete directly against them. How 'to do it? Set up "performance" standards tailored to the capabilities of large corporations. The corporate approach to sola,r has consistently been biased towards exotic "high-efficiency" systems- ones that maximize the energy collected per square foot of collector but which produce less energy per dollar of expenditure. They know they can't c;oinpete on whole-system performance, so they try to push the issues to specific subsystems that can (but shouldn't) be maximized. The result is that an apparently innocent technical standard for thermodynamic efficiency clearly discriminates against simpler systems (homemade or local collectors, wood heat, passive solar construction) that are overall more effective and economical. Look at the federal and state standards being set up to determine what designs will qualify for tax credits, rebates or financing, and see what they really mean. • Curiously, no one has been speaking up against this. What has happened to the people developing-solar energy over the last decade who lovingly espoused the vision of decentralized, do-it-yourself technology? Burned out? Bought out? Shoved aside? Their silence has occurred in part because solar has been so _new that its proponents have weJcomed any means to get • it developed, endorsed, accepted and applied, realizing on some level that solar must be accepted in concept before the question of How and Who can .be dealt with. More importantly, developn:ient of solar energy has been tightly tied with undevelopment of nuclear energy, and to many people the corporate control of solar energy has seemed to be an acceptable price to pay- better they make solar collectors than reactors. But the solar/nuclear tussle is being won by the •inherently better wisdom, logic and economics of solar-not be corporate control of the industry. The question now is do we really need to or wish to pay that price or if we c~n still avoid doing so. -;-more+ KEEPING SOLAR SIMPLE What Can Be Done? • Demand change of ERDA funding focus and end of industry SUbsidy. • Demanq reasonable performance standards for solar that fit local collectors. • Demand encouragement of community production. • Encourage backyard solar- change people's heads · from buying to building: - Make available workable whole system plans, manuals and options for solar hot water systems arid hookup to existing water tanks. - Work with hardware stores to make kits of parts available. - Lay out community economic impacts of local and home production. -Do publicized workshops for building solar hot water heaters on SUNday. Install units on newspaper plant, TV station, mayor's house. Do workshops in D.C. for all congressional representatives. Publish plans in newspapers. - Provide write-ups on ERDA coverups and advantages to local and homemade units to local newspapers. • Develop local financing for local/backyard sy~tems. - See Lee's article in this issue on pressuring local banks. -Show banks precedent elsewhere for financing standard backyard units. • Publicize information on passive design and relative costs of active and passive systems. • Develop manual on insulating shutter construction. • Put together the figures that show whether giving away materials for homemade solar waterheaters would be cheaper for utilities. than new energy production. •
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