Our world is in the midst of an endless list of crisis scenarios related to politics, the economy, credit, the environment, health care, security, human rights, energy, water, food, and the list goes on and on.   Yet there is some reason for optimism, particularly related to our potential to transition to sustainable and clean energy systems. 

The world needs sustainable, decentralized clean energy as a foundation upon which communities can build sustainable, decentralized and strong economies.
    
Unfortunately the only real progress for renewable energy in the U.S. is coming from a handful of states that have invested in a clean energy future, despite U.S. federal policy that dramatically favors centralized, monopolistic energy from oil, coal, and nuclear power.
    
This summary of a few of our national budget priorities during the past eight years is a good illustration of how Vermont and other states are being forced to spend their dollars on activities that have prevented the “green economy” from coming to life.
 
    1.     Subsidies for coal and oil industry: $75 Billion
    2.     Afghanistan oil-gas war: $233 Billion
    3.     Iraq oil-war: $706 Billion
    4.     Renewable energy subsidies: $12 Billion
     
Our national government’s investment in the “green economy” this decade totals less than 1 percent of its investment in the fossil-fuel subsidies shown above. And so far, Obama has given every indication that his administration is all about continuity in these regards, versus change.  Yes, there was $32 billion in the stimulus package for renewable energy and efficiency. That’s more than ever before, but is still peanuts compared to the trillions of tax and inflation-dollars that have been committed for continued global military insanity and corporate welfare. A national clean-energy policy will continue to be “back-burnered” behind healthcare, the economy, and war.
    
How can we build an independent, sovereign, energy-independent Vermont, when our national government has bankrupted us? Vermont’s economic and political independence will increase in direct correlation to how well we develop the foundation of our economy: sustainable, domestic energy. The good news is that market forces have made solar, wind, and biomass energy economically viable in Vermont. The bad news is, we’re attached to a sinking Titanic and we’re not moving nearly fast enough to deploy the lifeboats.
    
Renewable energy will create strong, decentralized, green economies for Vermont communities. In turn, local economies so well-grounded will provide a foundation for an effective commitment to human rights, and economic development that distributes food, water, and wealth more equitably and sustainably.
    
Our national government leaders, including those supposed champions of environmentalism such as Al Gore and Barack Obama, have given us only token gestures and a lot of empty rhetoric. Vermont’s U.S. Congressional delegation is impotent in these regards.  Most national politicians claim to support renewable energy, yet their priorities, as expressed by the subsidies they extend with our tax dollars, continue to support coal, oil, and military adventures; by contrast, they characterize renewable energy as “in need of more research to make it cost-effective.”
    
We don’t need new energy technologies. We just need the cultural and political will to invest in the transition and take the power back from the vested interests that today control our energy economy.  Most people believe that solar, wind, and biomass energy systems are not yet cost-effective compared to fossil fuels. That’s only because fossil fuels have been heavily subsidized for more than 50 years. The price you pay for electricity or heating oil would be at least twice as high if not for decades of heavy federal subsidies. In most European countries gasoline has cost more than $8/gallon for many years, and electricity costs are generally twice the U.S. national average ($.16/kWh vs. $08/kWh in the U.S.). If today’s renewable energy systems were deployed at a scale to cover a majority of our energy needs, the cost per kilowatt-hour from solar, wind or biomass would be less than unsubsidized coal-electricity.

Vermont’s energy profile
    
Vermont is already a national leader in energy issues, with tremendous local energy resources within our borders. We have the capacity to become energy independent with aggressive investment in wind, solar, and biomass energy systems. Without the hopeless burdens we carry as part of the U.S. Empire, we could create a sustainable, just economy.
    
We are the only state in the nation with a state-supported efficiency utility, and we have significantly reduced our energy use per person during the past decade.  We could attempt to buy back our hydropower sites from the out-of-state corporations that Governor Douglas allowed to purchase them. Nearly 30 percent of Vermont school children attend schools that are heated sustainably by high-efficiency boilers burning locally harvested woodchips and yielding low emissions. Vermont has enough standing biomass in the forest to sustainably heat every house in the state with wood, which would keep more than $700 million in the annual local economy instead of paying for out-of-state oil and propane.  Vermont was the first state in the nation whose legislature passed a statewide “feed in tariff” bill that forces utilities to pay favorable rates to producers of renewable energy (albeit with a conservative cap at less than 5 percent of our power needs, for now).
    
Vermont’s business community has spawned many renewable-energy companies that are national leaders. In fact, Vermont probably has more clean-energy expertise per capita than any other state in the country. These companies include NRG Systems, Earth Turbines, and Northern Power Systems (the latter recovering from several rocky years, economically), all of them international leaders in wind turbine/measurement technology; Biomass Energy Resource Center, the nation’s leader in biomass feasibility studies for district heating and power generation; groSolar, leader of the pack in solar installation); NativeEnergy, specializing in voluntary renewable energy credits (RECs) and carbon offsets that fund renewable energy projects; Vermont Energy Investment Corp., an international leader in efficiency programs and consulting which also runs Efficiency Vermont (ECT). And there are others beside.
    
Sadly for those who had hoped for “change,” it appears that Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress will pay lip service but not much more to the development of a green economy, while continuing to push our resources into war and debt. Vermont’s fastest path to a clean-energy economy is to build it ourselves by removing our federal burdens – for example, by seceding.  We could then invest our hard-earned money in Vermont’s priorities, including local, decentralized renewable-energy systems, instead of endlessly subsidizing the oil, coal, and military industries.
    
Future “Energy Optimist” columns will explore Vermont’s energy options in more depth. Other topics are also covered on the VT Commons Blog at www.vtcommons.org/blog/gaelan-brown.