Fossil-Fueled Pollution and the Birth of Solar and Wind Power

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Written by Paul Wiseman for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--It is important to start the green movement volume of the energy transition series with a clear statement that industry as a whole, and the mining and fossil fuel industries in particular, did indeed spend about two centuries progressively and unabashedly ignoring their environmental impact. Or more clearly, the human leaders of those sectors made decisions that flagrantly disregarded the environment and the people downstream who depended on that environment.

Part two of this series reported how early crude oil's only useful product was kerosene--but behind that was the ugly fact that the gasoline produced, then just a useless byproduct, was flushed down streams and rivers, killing everything in and around them. In Texas and elsewhere, oil companies used to dump sludge into pits without any remediation.

Many industries polluted the Great Lake and ocean coastlines for hundreds of miles. To this day, decades into the environmental movement, residents of New Orleans' typical statement about nearby Lake Pontchartrain is, "It's not nearly as bad as it used to be."

Coal takes the brunt of the blame because its airborne pollutants and strip mining were easily visible. On the former, my father, who grew up in north central Kentucky, told of days when families couldn't line-dry their laundry due to windborne grime from a nearby coal-fired factory. On the latter, elsewhere in Kentucky, the song "Paradise" said it all: "Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

Early Environmental Voices
Rachel Carson's earthshaking 1960 volume Silent Spring does not deal with hydrocarbons, but it was a bellwether in the green movement. It described how the pesticide DDT damaged the shells of birds' eggs, eventually leading to the banning of the chemical a few years later. Carson also is credited with being the impetus for the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Nixon Administration in 1970. The 1960s were the decade when the green movement began to gain widespread acceptance, dovetailing with the social consciousness of the Woodstock generation.

But the foundations date back at least to the late 19th century with the founding of national parks and the National Forest Service, the latter headed by conservationist Gifford Pinchot. Other early environmentalists were Sierra Club founder John Muir, naturalist John James Audubon, and others.

Green Power
In truth, the move toward wind and solar are more of a return to ancient ways than a new thing. Wind literally was the driving force behind naval operations, which included travel, commerce and warfare, for thousands of years. To this day, a disproportionate number of people live near the coast--40% in the U.S. live in coastal counties, accounting for just 10% of the land mass, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Wind has also been used to dry clothes, separate wheat from chaff, and to evaporate perspiration on a hot windy day since the earliest days of civilization. Its history in electric power is a little shorter.

Trying to Catch the Wind
While the modern era of wind generation is considered to have begun in the 1980s, its history extends back about 100 years, according to an article by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). "Following the invention of the electric generator in the 1830s, engineers started attempting to harness wind energy to produce electricity. Wind power generation took place in the United Kingdom and the United States in 1887 and 1888, but modern wind power is considered to have been first developed in Denmark, where horizontal-axis wind turbines were built in 1891 and a 22.8-meter wind turbine began operation in 1897."

Sunrise on Solar Power--the French Connection
Turtles may have been the first to discover the joy of sunshine as they climbed onto rocks on sunny days, but the photovoltaic effect that converts sunlight into electricity was discovered in 1839 by French physicist Edmond Becquerel.

About 25 years later a fellow Frenchman, mathematician Augustin Mouchot, took Becquerel's work a step further. He began registering patents for solar-powered engines in the 1860s. U.S. inventors quickly followed. Since then, solar panels have been modified and upgraded constantly, including other solar systems such as concentrating solar power (CSP) to create steam.

Today's photovoltaic solar cells may be traced to Charles Fritts, a New York inventor who created the first one by coating selenium with a thin layer of gold. This panel achieved a paltry 1-2% efficiency, compared with today's 15-20%. But it was a start.

The modern solar panel era may have begun in the 1950s, when Bell Labs replaced selenium with silicon for greater efficiency, increasing it to about 6%.

OPEC's Unintended Role in Commercializing Solar Power
The OPEC oil embargo of the early 1970s sent the rest of the world scrambling for alternative energy sources, and it was suddenly, "Here Comes the Sun," among other options. Smithsonian Magazine relates, "Congress passed the Solar Energy Research, Development and Demonstration Act of 1974, and the federal government was committed more than ever "to make solar viable and affordable and market it to the public."

Energy security, which had been a source of great concern to almost everyone except the United States until then, suddenly became an issue, engendering scrutiny of things like energy conservation and energy independence. That, combined with increasing environmental concerns, opened the door for the energy transition as we now know it.

Next: An Inconvenient Truth and the empowering of the energy transition.

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