This article is about the rolling blackouts PG&E is using in California, trying to reduce liability for causing wildfires. Yet the blackouts harm people: loss of food in refrigerators, loss of income while businesses are closed, loss of medicine that must be stored cold, loss of use of electric medical devices.
While this article is about California, it could also apply to the Southeast. We face wildfires, and we face flooding and loss of power from super strong hurricanes. We all suffer in many ways after an extreme event. Going forward, we need to learn from what has happened in multiple states, and make our electric grid more resilient.
Distributed energy (rooftop solar) will cut down on the need for transmission lines and resulting sparks from the lines. It will also function after a hurricane. Smart planning will keep us safer and healthier now, and we will be more prepared for the future.
We spend billions of dollars each year in federal subsidies for oil and gas companies. If we shifted some of our federal spending to planning for resilience, and to subsidizing solar installation for low income communities, we would achieve many goals: less air pollution for everyone, more electricity when hurricanes knock down power poles, less risk of sparks from transmission lines, lower energy burden for lower income communities. It achieves so many benefits!! Let’s move forward and #ActOnClimate!!
https://medium.com/@UrbanResilience/pg-e-chose-safety-but-for-whom-e1e57b596d9
