From What Is to What If? Made in Minnesota Energy

[Jon Freise]

Hi Everyone,

I sometimes think of our journey into the future as one of trying to sail a ship on a foggy sea where our view is limited.  I spend a lot of time looking for the reefs where our collective ship might run aground.  That old Lizard brain looking for dangers and trying to avoid them.  But the more recent mammalian nurturing brain also has a view on the future.  And that is the view of the lovely calm bays, estuaries, and large open waters where our collective sail boat would love to linger.  The places we want to go.

So in the interest of stretching those "What If" muscles I propose the idea of imagining what it would be like in 10 years if some specific and really good thing happened?  What would that thing be?  What would it be like?  What would be nice about it?

Here are a couple of dreams / wishes / visions that have come to me recently:

What if our Minnesota forest industry started to make the materials needed to super insulate houses?  And it became required that all houses were super insulated in Minnesota?  And low interest loans were given to upgrade existing buildings and homes?

Millions of dollars of investment would shift out of the hands of the oil and natural gas companies and would be redirected to our small northern towns and industries.  Thousands of new carpenter, window installer, and air sealer jobs would be created.  People in rural Minnesota, who suffer such high energy costs, would have warm and snug houses they could afford to heat.  And our rural and urban connections would deepen and strengthen.

What if we took $2 billion of our Minnesota budget surplus, used it for 20% down on some loans, and built $10 billion worth of renewable energy wind and solar in Minnesota?  We covered every school?  And supplied all the small towns?  And connected them on the grid to reach our cities?

Then our energy $ would flow to rural communities across Minnesota instead of leaving the state to drill more fracked gas wells or coal shipments?  Jobs would be created across Minnesota?  What if whole new companies in these counties were setup to build these renewable energy systems?  We would have rural county constituencies who would want to see the energy transition continue.

What if our local coops banded together to standardize the size and strength of glass jars and bottles?  Instead of recycling glass we reused it!  Reusing glass can be powered by solar hot water for washing instead of high temperature industrial heat for remelting the glass and down cycling it.  The coops all installed commercial dishwashing equipment to clean and sanitize the bottles people returned.  Local food makers could pick up these jars and reuse them for a very low cost.  The local food business booms with very cheap containers.  The one time through food industry (spaghetti sauce anyone?) ends up subsidizing our local food system!

What if all food and food containers were compostable and non-toxic?  All inks, labels, stickers, wrappers and twist ties were also compostable and non-toxic?  And we created a true natural cycle of soil to plant to raw food to prepared food to compost to soil?  And instead of building up toxins in that cycle, we created a soil building cycle like nature has created?  And tons of new organic matter was created that could be used for soil amendments?

Our little collective sailing ship is in a rough patch of sea right now.  There are some nasty looking reefs on our current course and some fruit cakes are staging a mutiny to control the tiller we cannot let happen.  But not far are some lovely green blue seas with sun!  Lovely bays and beaches where we will want to stop and drink in the views.

Cheers!

-Jon

[Alan Muller]

These are all sound and attractive ideas. The question is:  How do we get there with a paralyzed political system.  The claimed) budget surplus surely must offer some opportunities.

At 12:25 PM 12/26/2021 -0600, Jon Freise wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I sometimes think of our journey into the future as one of trying to sail a ship on a foggy sea where our view is limited.  I spend a lot of time looking for the reefs where our collective ship might run aground.  That old Lizard brain looking for dangers and trying to avoid them.  But the more recent mammalian nurturing brain also has a view on the future.  And that is the view of the lovely calm bays, estuaries, and large open waters where our collective sail boat would love to linger.  The places we want to go.

So in the interest of stretching those "What If" muscles I propose the idea of imagining what it would be like in 10 years if some specific and really good thing happened?  What would that thing be?  What would it be like?  What would be nice about it?

Here are a couple of dreams / wishes / visions that have come to me recently:

What if our Minnesota forest industry started to make the materials needed to super insulate houses?  And it became required that all houses were super insulated in Minnesota?  And low interest loans were given to upgrade existing buildings and homes?
Millions of dollars of investment would shift out of the hands of the oil and natural gas companies and would be redirected to our small northern towns and industries.  Thousands of new carpenter, window installer, and air sealer jobs would be created.  People in rural Minnesota, who suffer such high energy costs, would have warm and snug houses they could afford to heat.  And our rural and urban connections would deepen and strengthen.

What if we took $2 billion of our Minnesota budget surplus, used it for 20% down on some loans, and built $10 billion worth of renewable energy wind and solar in Minnesota?  We covered every school?  And supplied all the small towns?  And connected them on the grid to reach our cities?
Then our energy $ would flow to rural communities across Minnesota instead of leaving the state to drill more fracked gas wells or coal shipments?  Jobs would be created across Minnesota?  What if whole new companies in these counties were setup to build these renewable energy systems?  We would have rural county constituencies who would want to see the energy transition continue.

What if our local coops banded together to standardize the size and strength of glass jars and bottles?  Instead of recycling glass we reused it!  Reusing glass can be powered by solar hot water for washing instead of high temperature industrial heat for remelting the glass and down cycling it.  The coops all installed commercial dishwashing equipment to clean and sanitize the bottles people returned.  Local food makers could pick up these jars and reuse them for a very low cost.  The local food business booms with very cheap containers.  The one time through food industry (spaghetti sauce anyone?) ends up subsidizing our local food system!

What if all food and food containers were compostable and non-toxic?  All inks, labels, stickers, wrappers and twist ties were also compostable and non-toxic?  And we created a true natural cycle of soil to plant to raw food to prepared food to compost to soil?  And instead of building up toxins in that cycle, we created a soil building cycle like nature has created?  And tons of new organic matter was created that could be used for soil amendments?

Our little collective sailing ship is in a rough patch of sea right now.  There are some nasty looking reefs on our current course and some fruit cakes are staging a mutiny to control the tiller we cannot let happen.  But not far are some lovely green blue seas with sun!  Lovely bays and beaches where we will want to stop and drink in the views.

Cheers!
-Jon


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[Brooke Dierkhising]

Hi!

Here is the all the beautiful news happening in our world now!

Happy New Year everyone!

Brooke

Links in the message (1)

Most Beautiful News of the Year — Infor...

On Sunday, December 26, 2021, 06:08:16 PM CST, Brooke Dierkhising <bdierk...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi Jon, 

Excellent challenge of the imagination! I will give it a try! This one is for you. I won't send it to the group.

Many look back at the year Joy Renni became a famous, 2029, as a pivot in world thinking about ocean life. Joy grew up near oceans and took an interest in those depths at an young age, which evolved into formal study, and then her life's work. She had been little known for her art, composing whale communication into song. Then, in 2029, Joy had an otherwordly breakthrough; after years of tinkering with materials to develop a whale musical instrument to amplify, she created a whale song translation device! She was astounded by what she heard the whales talk about, so she set up a popcast called "The Whale Boardroom." It became an overnight sensation, broadcasting in countries all over the world! At first all this was a curiousity, but it soon became more than that. The whales' talking inspired a new creative thinking. By 2030, people everywhere looked inward, as that was the whale message, and as people looked at their pain, and also their beauty, they were moved to a state of harmony. They understood the oceans with new awe. More importantly, they saw all life on the planet with a new brightness. By 2031, pollution, disease, war... indeed, all the many horrors of Pandora's box, where no longer. People only wanted beauty, and so that is what they did. Now, as we look ahead to the new year upon us, 2032, there is no need to fix anything; we recognize and undertand everything is beautifully faultless.  

Happy soon to be new year!!

All the best,

Brooke

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/transition-twin-cities/202112261855.1BQIt2bZ010623%40mail1.dca.net.

[Jon Freise]

Hi Alan, Everyone,

Yes, it is challenging.  The paralysis is the goal of some players in the system.  By turning climate change into a conservative vs liberal issue the fossil fuel companies have caused paralysis on an issue that should be straightforward.  90% of the economy is non-fossil fuel and can only take a loss from climate change and environmental damage vs the 10% that is the fossil fuel industry.  But they turned that into a paralyzing 50% vs 50% with large donations, buying up media companies, etc.  Environmentalism is actually a cross liberal and conservative issue.  It rests on the values of Fairness and Justice.  No one should be able to make a living by destroying the homes and livelihoods of others.  Almost everyone agrees on that.  Check out the movie "Dark Waters" for an example of a deeply conservative farmer and lawyer take on DuPont for poisoning the farmers land.  Again, a straightforward issue is rendered "controversial" by disinformation.

I don't know how to break that 50-50 impasse.  But I think there have been some good lessons learned based on altruism and self interest.  First, using people's altruism: Pass policies in areas that do have majority consent that get the install base growing in such a way that it lowers the long term cost for everyone.  So Germany purchasing large volumes of solar panels allowed large factory construction and volume efficiency and drove down everyone's cost and started the solar PV revolution world wide.  If we could do that in a few metro cities for windows and super insulation supplies it would make a big difference statewide.

On the self interest side: Rural areas pay the highest energy costs in the state.  And they stand to benefit the most from renewable energy system taxes and jobs.  Design a policy that helps on those two fronts and make it hard for those representatives to vote against them.  As the number of renewable energy jobs grow they will carry a stronger and stronger political weight.  The nation had no problem passing the ethanol into gasoline blending bill (which I actually oppose) because rural areas supported it.

Those are my thoughts.  Focus on policies that build momentum toward lower cost for the first 20% then let the market do the last 80%.  Germany and solar PV.  California and Electric cars.  Invest in ways that build constituencies in key rural districts.  You don't need them all to pass by a majority.

-Jon