I got a nice note from whoever it is who runs the poorcodes.com blog to alert me to their thoughts on my thoughts in Backspin this week. I’ve already had some feedback (a selected item can be found here) but poorcodes’ comments are rather more measured. Poorcodes argues that reducing electricity consumption is not the issue but reducing the production of eletricity from fossil fuels. Indeed, there is no argument that that is the goal but what Poorcodes misses is the time required to wean ourselves off fossil fuel driven power stations. We’re not talking about years, we’re talking about decades and solar energy plants will not come on-line fast enough to make a serious dent.
There’s also an issue with solar power that I haven’t seen addressed except in academic circles: The cost of producing solar powered systems. Actually making the things isn’t cost free and the economics — as far as I understand it — aren’t a slam dunk win. I had a discussion with a company that runs their data centers indirectly on solar power (they buy the “green power” through credits) and thereby proclaim themselves to be Green. What was missing was the analysis: They hadn’t done a real balance sheet for being green they way they were doing it so they couldn’t really prove that they were working in favor of the environment. While I applaud all such efforts I’m also not going to be sold that some organization is green on the naive belief that just because someone says they are using “green” energy sources.
