Something Puzzling
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Something puzzling is behind the clamor for green
energy. It is powered by politics and subsidies not thirst
for natural energy. No one notices the beautiful, cost-
effective traditional use of the sun, given up as we
subsidize the generation of solar electricity and wind
power.
The most obvious defeat is daylight. We build
walls and roofs without skylights or windows. New
shopping centers have acres of such roofs with electric
lights on all day during sunny weather. These buildings
which disregard well known traditional use of the sun,
unnecessarily gobble up the electricity generated by the
solar power plants. The contradiction could not be
more apparent than in the blank windowless walls of the
new Schott solar factory rising at Albuquerque’s Mesa
del Sol development.
Worse than the waste of money for electricity is
the spell cast by the fluorescent bulbs. This electric
spell is widespread and effective. It swallows each of
us when we step through another electric door to enter
another fluorescent sales belly.
Along with the many tours of green buildings we
need a shame parade for the acres and acres of Lowes,
Office Max, Walgreens, Staples, Pep Boys and dozens
of other chain stores which have their electric lights on
all day, every day. Why subsidize grid connected
photovoltaic panels when the grid merely feeds an
electric sewer?
Wal Mart, to their credit is an exception. They use
prismatic light-diffusing skylights and leave their lights
off on sunny days.
It takes the same electricity for the mundane task
of drying a quantity of water as it does to lift it 146
miles, yet clothes lines which dry the clothes simply
holding them in the air are forgotten or even outlawed
while solar electricity which might have had high value
off grid at remote sites ends drying clothes.
Everything assumes we must use electricity, yet
we hardly had electricity a mere century ago. I worry
about these puzzles because at Zomeworks we have
tried to modify and expand non-electric passive uses of
nature. Inexpensive solar water heaters, reflector
shades for skylights and windows. We have test
buildings that stay cool in the hot Albuquerque summer
by radiating heat to the night sky. No fans, no pumps,
no drafts. These are similar to our Cool Cell metal
cabinets which cool batteries and electronics and which
we sell around the world to international corporations.
It is odd that we are more successful selling passive
equipment to take care of machinery than people.
When I become discouraged with our failure to
interest the public in reflector shades for skylights,
passive heliostats for day-lighting, passive solar water
heating, I remind myself that we are fighting to avoid a
huge detour of nature. How can our products succeed
when windows and skylights with centuries of success
behind them are losing out to light bulbs fed by
subsidized green power.
We already know how to do daylighting. All over
Albuquerque there are old buildings with good day-
lighting. If the car companies told us we must drive
because people can’t walk barefoot, we might
remember that we already wear shoes. However, when
it comes to day-lighting, clotheslines, passive heating
and cooling, our past successes are forgotten and new
subsidized industries are created.
News of solar energy from television and the press
usually concerns contrived State subsidized business
opportunities, Energy Policy. It may be better for your
local utility that you light your shop with light bulbs
powered by PV panels instead of windows but it isn’t
better for you or me.
We are in the midst of a silent impersonal
revolution. Traditional, intimate, natural ways of using
the sun are replaced by the synthetic. Big business,
government and grid electricity for everything.
The green revolutionaries who staff this attack on
tradition do so without understanding. How could they
be mistaken, there are scientists who support them. The
Green Revolutionaries don’t expect anyone to take
personally what is being done to them and their
traditions in the name of science, progress and
greenness but look around you.
energy. It is powered by politics and subsidies not thirst
for natural energy. No one notices the beautiful, cost-
effective traditional use of the sun, given up as we
subsidize the generation of solar electricity and wind
power.
The most obvious defeat is daylight. We build
walls and roofs without skylights or windows. New
shopping centers have acres of such roofs with electric
lights on all day during sunny weather. These buildings
which disregard well known traditional use of the sun,
unnecessarily gobble up the electricity generated by the
solar power plants. The contradiction could not be
more apparent than in the blank windowless walls of the
new Schott solar factory rising at Albuquerque’s Mesa
del Sol development.
Worse than the waste of money for electricity is
the spell cast by the fluorescent bulbs. This electric
spell is widespread and effective. It swallows each of
us when we step through another electric door to enter
another fluorescent sales belly.
Along with the many tours of green buildings we
need a shame parade for the acres and acres of Lowes,
Office Max, Walgreens, Staples, Pep Boys and dozens
of other chain stores which have their electric lights on
all day, every day. Why subsidize grid connected
photovoltaic panels when the grid merely feeds an
electric sewer?
Wal Mart, to their credit is an exception. They use
prismatic light-diffusing skylights and leave their lights
off on sunny days.
It takes the same electricity for the mundane task
of drying a quantity of water as it does to lift it 146
miles, yet clothes lines which dry the clothes simply
holding them in the air are forgotten or even outlawed
while solar electricity which might have had high value
off grid at remote sites ends drying clothes.
Everything assumes we must use electricity, yet
we hardly had electricity a mere century ago. I worry
about these puzzles because at Zomeworks we have
tried to modify and expand non-electric passive uses of
nature. Inexpensive solar water heaters, reflector
shades for skylights and windows. We have test
buildings that stay cool in the hot Albuquerque summer
by radiating heat to the night sky. No fans, no pumps,
no drafts. These are similar to our Cool Cell metal
cabinets which cool batteries and electronics and which
we sell around the world to international corporations.
It is odd that we are more successful selling passive
equipment to take care of machinery than people.
When I become discouraged with our failure to
interest the public in reflector shades for skylights,
passive heliostats for day-lighting, passive solar water
heating, I remind myself that we are fighting to avoid a
huge detour of nature. How can our products succeed
when windows and skylights with centuries of success
behind them are losing out to light bulbs fed by
subsidized green power.
We already know how to do daylighting. All over
Albuquerque there are old buildings with good day-
lighting. If the car companies told us we must drive
because people can’t walk barefoot, we might
remember that we already wear shoes. However, when
it comes to day-lighting, clotheslines, passive heating
and cooling, our past successes are forgotten and new
subsidized industries are created.
News of solar energy from television and the press
usually concerns contrived State subsidized business
opportunities, Energy Policy. It may be better for your
local utility that you light your shop with light bulbs
powered by PV panels instead of windows but it isn’t
better for you or me.
We are in the midst of a silent impersonal
revolution. Traditional, intimate, natural ways of using
the sun are replaced by the synthetic. Big business,
government and grid electricity for everything.
The green revolutionaries who staff this attack on
tradition do so without understanding. How could they
be mistaken, there are scientists who support them. The
Green Revolutionaries don’t expect anyone to take
personally what is being done to them and their
traditions in the name of science, progress and
greenness but look around you.