I have been doing some research into alternative energy solutions lately, and I have come to my own conclusions about how we really need to address the energy and global warming crisis in the near term.

The answer is neither unique nor sexy – its good ol conservation.

Like a lot of people, I really would like to have alternative energy sources like solar and wind power just pick up the slack and allow us to continue our energy-gobbling lifestyles guilt-free. But that’s not going to happen, not in my lifetime.

The fact is that solar and wind power simply do not have the practical cost and efficiencies that burning fossil fuel does, and that’s reality.

I know a lot of people would like to blame our government, oil companies, or some secret cabal from making solar power be a drop-in replacement that takes us off the grid, but this is conspiracy fantasy. Many of the wealthiest energy and technology companies and zaibatsus in the world have put billions into solar energy research over the last 30 years, and we’re at where we’re at.

The promise of owning the technology of practical clean energy generation which competes with fossil fuels is about as good as it gets as far as corporate incentive to innovate is concerned.

Not all tech works off of Moore’s Law – in fact, very little does.

Contrary to popular belief, we do not have ‘unlimited’ amounts of solar and wind power – we have a fixed amount of solar energy per square foot (which varies widely based on time of day, locale and season), and we can only efficiently convert a small amount of that square foot into electricity.

Even if we could be 100% efficient in collection, solar energy is not produced at night, and excess power, if any, generated during the day must be stored in batteries, which are notoriously inefficient in themselves. The success of solar is married to the success of battery technology, lifespan, and cost.

As it scales to available space, it is also often tied to the cost of real estate – one recent proposal stated that to replace only 90% of our electricity generation in the US with solar, we would need a space equivalent to the size of the state of Vermont. This would obviously be the largest engineering project in the history of mankind.

Wind power is even more limited – unlike solar power, most of the United States does not have the excess wind required for practical energy generation from this resource. Like hydro, wind power is severely limited to locale.

But the crux of the problem is this: it doesn’t matter how you generate your electricity, it is ALWAYS FAR cheaper and far more environmentally beneficial to conserve any given watt of electricity then to generate it.

No one likes to hear this. It’s much easier to point fingers and insist that we could all be running of solar pv right now with our same consumption levels – again, fantasy.

Recently I posted about how I saved about 1000 watts of electricity simply by switching from halogen to CFL lamps in my basement. In order to generate 1000 watts of electricity from solar would require an initial investment of about $5000 in panels, inverter, wiring, installation, and batteries so that lighting would actually be available when I needed it. Also, there would be more panel space required than I even have on my roof. Most people with solar panels do not even have 600 watts of panels.

The CFLs cost about $200 (probably cheaper by now), and require no installation or maintenance.

Additional savings can be made a number of ways technologically – people sensors that turn lights on and off automatically, smart power strips that shut down electronics rather than sucking standby power, and energy-efficient appliances are some of the low-hanging fruit.

However, its been pretty clear that the cost of energy and An Inconvenient Truth have not spurned the kind of individual conservation efforts we need to address global warming. It is for this reason that rationing truly needs to happen.

In order to force conservation, saving energy needs to hurt. We need to *do things*, we need to be *mindful*. This will suck, but it has to happen, and it has to be enforced.

We need to ration.

I am a realist and don’t have the details on how to do this, and I don’t have the answers of how to prevent the collapse of the domestic energy industry which could result by suddenly reducing our power consumption by 15%.

But after studying this problem, I do know that the low hanging fruit – and even a lot of the high-hanging fruit – of fighting global warming lies in us shutting off our electronics when not in use, switching to CFL’s, keeping our homes well-insulated and using energy-efficient appliances.

The idea of carbon-neutrality gets tossed around a lot – the idea that for every $1 in electricity you use, you invest $1 in green energy, but this is NOT being carbon neutral, because, as we know, conservation beats any sort of usage both in carbon expenditure and cost.

At some point, we will have to individually justify the energy being consumed by our homes and businesses individually, and our access to it will have to be limited.