When the lights go out:
It is a wake-up call for serious conservation
Leader
Saturday August 16, 2003
The Guardian
On a hot Thursday afternoon, reported one US public radio
service yesterday, some 50 million people from the Northeast to
the Midwest "had something in common with the people of Iraq -
a power outage that brought life to a standstill". With respect to
all those who were escorted out of the subway by flashlight, or
were caught in traffic jams for hours, or spent a sleepless night
without air conditioning, the blackout that spread across more
than 9,000sq km was not quite so bad as everyday existence in
Baghdad or Basra. No one risked being shot in the dark during
curfew, there was very little looting, there is no sewage in the
streets, and water and power shortages have not been routine
for months.
Yet it was still a salutary warning not just to the country that is
the world's biggest energy guzzler, but to the rest of the world
that aspires to head the same way. As the New York mayor,
Michael Bloomberg, said with an air of surprised discovery, "all
of a sudden, a few things weren't working and then you realised
how dependent we are on electricity". Unlike the California
blackouts three years ago, this one is not the direct
consequence of ill-judged privatisation. Although there is some
evidence that deregulated power companies are more likely to
reduce spare capacity - the so-called "spinning reserve" which
can cushion in a crisis - the root cause is much simpler. As
demand grows, the margins diminish and an unforeseen incident
- yesterday there was still argument over what sparked the
outage - can escalate rapidly. Indeed research has shown that
the more sophisticated a power grid becomes in order to provide
maximum peak capacity, the more vulnerable it will be to black
out completely when something comparatively minor occurs.
Among the few pluses on Thursday night was the opportunity for
New Yorkers to see the night stars for the first time in decades.
There were also tales of "calm and ingenuity" as heroes
emerged, like the man who took over traffic control in Ottawa. In
one respect, this outage was unlike any other before: it was the
first time that people came out of their offices or from the
subway blinking in the sunlight and said to one another in a tone
of misplaced certainty "Bin Laden". With or without the terror
factor, it is a wake-up call for energy conservation that no one,
anywhere, should ignore.
guardian.co.uk |
