Want to hurt Putin? Go green
Want to hurt the corrupt Russian petro-state now invading Ukraine?
Get your house checked for energy efficiency. Use mass transit. Telecommute from home. Get solar panels on your roof.
This is because all these things — thought of as tree-hugging environmental stuff — touch on global energy markets.
Everyone not named Putin hates the calamitous war Russia is waging against Ukraine. It offends in every way.
But we’re also not crazy about the high gas prices, spiked in part by last week’s U.S. decision to ban imports of Russian oil.
It’s where the local and the global meet. Most of the time, we just gripe and pay.
“People want cheap before they want anything else,” said energy consultant Joel Gordes.
For decades, Gordes has said that the way people generate energy, then use and waste that energy has to change. The alternative, he has said, is a war over oil every decade or so.
This current, far away war, is bringing it all back home.
This has happened before. Tom Wemyss, chief executive officer of PurePoint Energy in Norwalk said that in the early 2000s, homeowners got interested in installing solar panels because of the 9/11 attacks. The rise of COVID brought PurePoint another boost in residential solar work.
“Now, they may be thinking about it again,” he said.
Wemyss said when most people opt for solar panels, it’s for environmental issues.
“But the primary reason, outside of environmental reasons, is for energy independence,” he said.
Forrest Hopper, who works as a solar consultant for Sunrun, a regional solar power company and for his own Danbury-based company, SolarXperience, said some of his customers understand the interconnection of energy and the environmental issues.
“It’s case-by-case,” Hopper said. “Some people see everything is linked to everything.”
Katie Dykes, the commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said gas price spikes, which began with the OPEC oil embargos in the 1970s, aren’t new. When they happen, she said, people begin to understand that oil is a global commodity.
“That’s happening now with natural gas as well,” Dykes said.
Connecticut is moving away from reliance on oil and natural gas as a source of power.
The state already gets a good share of its energy from the Millstone nuclear power plant, Dykes said. It’s also relying more on solar and wind power. When offshore wind plants start up in the next few years, Dykes said, they’ll provide the state with 20 percent of its energy needs.
Its goal now is to have 100 percent of its energy supplied by renewable sources by 2040.
“I think there’s a pivot, and that it’s accelerating,” she said.
On an individual level, Gordes said one of the best things people can do is have an energy audit done on their homes. To learn more about such programs, go to Energize Connecticut at energizect.com.
Gordes said that old furnaces, which run at 40 percent efficiency, can be replaced by modern one that run at 90 percent efficiency.
Gordes said Connecticut could further its energy diversity by expanding its limited program for shared solar power.
Some people live in homes or apartments where solar panels aren’t practical. Shared solar, Gordes said, would allow those people to hook into a larger solar installation designed to serve many users.
Gordes has also been an advocate of decentralizing the state’s energy grid and instead relying on several micro-grids that serve smaller pockets of the state’s citizenry. Such a system, he said, would protect people against the growing threat of international cyber hacking..
There is also the pivot to electric vehicles, which, again, decreases U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Dykes said the number of electric vehicles on state roads, while still small, has increased fivefold since 2019. While they’re still more expensive than gasdriven vehicles, federal tax credits and state rebates can offset those upfront costs.
And while most trips homeowners take in an electric vehicle are short, allowing for a replenishing overnight charge at home, Dykes said the state will spend $55 million to install hundreds of charging stations along state highways. That, she said, may alleviate the trip anxiety keeping people from buying electric vehicles.
All these small things add up. The local becomes the global.
“There are people doing all these good things to support Ukraine,” Dykes said. “People are doing things like holding bake sales. I think you could add test driving an electric vehicle to that list.”