Vijay Vaitheeswaran – Micropower and the coming energy revolution

Vijay Vaitheeswaran discusses the shift from an oil-based energy industry towards “smart micropower”, a new paradigm involving a smart grid that integrates both decentralized and centralized power plants in a robust fashion. He explains that the coming decentralization of the energy will inexorably lead to a democratization of infrastuctures, away from monopolistic controls.

Vasilis Kostakis/Pavlos Hatzopoulos: How would you rate the production of micropower since 2005 when you wrote Power to the People? What have been the main obstacles towards its further development?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: The rate of growth of micropower over the past decade has surpassed even my great expectations. There is now more new micropower installed each year than nuclear power, and the trend clearly favors decentralization.

V.K./P.H.: How do you see the current co-existence of the big power plants along with the distributed energy production techniques?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: I believe that micro and mega power will coexist for quite some time. One reason is the question of legacy assets: utilities that have paid-up investments in big coal or nuclear plants are not going to scrap them unless forced to do so by regulation or carbon price. Another reason is the time required to scale up micropower, which means there will be plenty of scope for existing plants to flourish as they provide grid stability. Finally, I believe in “smart micropower”, a new paradigm involving a smart grid that integrates both decentralized and centralized power plants in a robust fashion–as long, of course, as all those plants are clean.

V.K./P.H.: In your vision about the future of the energy revolution, what is the place of the distributed energy production mode?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: I believe the coming energy revolution will see the dramatic surge of decentralized power. The essential enabling technologies for this are energy storage and smart grid technologies.

V.K./P.H.: Is it possible for such diverse agents as the state, peer production communities and markets to harmoniously co-exist in the energy realm?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: I think the best way forward is for public and private actors to cooperate, but with common goals and differentiated responsibilities. It is the role of government, for example, to set policies (like carbon taxes) that deal fairly with “externalities” like CO2 emissions. However, it must be the private sector and the robust interplay between intellectual and financial capital that picks technology winners–not government bureaucrats.

V.K./P.H.: Although far-sighted corporations should inevitably be part of the solution, it has been claimed that a free-market view on the energy problem cannot lead to a happy end in a world of finite resources and speculative abuses. How you respond to this type of criticism?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran: There is no free market in energy, and there has not been at any time in the past century. Let us remember that OPEC tries to fix the oil market, before that the Seven Sisters oil giants tried to coordinate production–and before the the Texas Railway Commission acted as a price fixer too. The lack of proper externalities pricing means many energy markets suffer from market and policy failure. What we need are level playing fields, which require both governments and private actors to change their behaviour.

V.K./P.H.: You have argued about the significance of innovative decentralised technologies for optimising energy systems . Would their use also lead to the democratisation of energy?

Vijay Vaitheeswaran:Vijay Vaitheeswaran: I believe decentralization of energy will inexorably lead to a democratization of energy. The best example comes with oil: a world powered by biofuels or hydrogen or electric transport can never be held hostage by a politicized cartel like OPEC or the Seven Sisters because anybody anywhere can make hydrogen or biofuel or electricity.

Special issue: p2p energy
Tags: energy, free-market, micropower, Vijay Vaitheeswaran

Print This Post

0 σχόλια »

Vijay Vaitheeswaran / webpage

Vijay Vaitheeswaran is a global correspondent for The Economist. He is the author of the book, “Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution will Transform an Industry, Change our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet”.

‣ P2P energy production and distribution

‣ Walt Patterson – Infrastructure keeps the lights on

‣ Hermann Scheer – Towards a new energy revolution

‣ George Papanikolaou - Peer to Peer energy production and the social conflicts in the era of “green development”

‣ Stelios Stavroulakis - The urgency of peer-to-peer communities for a smooth transition to renewables

-->