Utilitarianism and solar energy.
Make a substantive comment of at least 250 words on the actual content of the essay below explaining what you learned from the post below, and what have they omitted that you would include?
Research into fusion power generation is often proposed as the potential ultimate solution to the energy crisis. To this, proponents of solar say “we already have fusion power, and the reactor is in the sky”. While it is true that enough insolation strikes the surface of the Earth to power the globe many times over, capturing and using said energy is not a simple task in a technical, economic, or political sense. To achieve a more accurate perspective of the issue, hedonistic calculus will be performed on three scenarios outlined in articles available on the internet.
The first scenario to be analyzed through the lens of hedonistic calculus is
“Coming Soon to This Coal County: Solar, in a Big Way” by Cara Buckley in the New York Times. The list of pleasures in the scenario described by this article are as follows: economic relief to the citizens of the county, generation of clean and renewable energy as a replacement for coal, and productive use of the land that is unsuitable for most uses due to pollution. The economic relief that will come to the citizens of the county is certain because the project has passed the last legal hurdle and is extremely likely to happen as described, is not remote as it is scheduled to start in the coming months. In the sense of intensity, it is estimated that most jobs created by the project will pay between $25 and $30 per hour, which is less than the average coal worker made, but when viewed from the perspective of extremely high and increasing poverty in the region, a strong positive nevertheless.
The duration, unfortunately, will not be very long save for a small minority of the jobs, as the vast majority of the created jobs will only last 12-18 months. There is a potential for follow-up work though, as the company leading the project has more in the region, which workers could benefit from. About 300 jobs will be created at the same time though, and the majority of the benefits will be to those working on the site. The environmental and land use benefits will provide real yet diffuse positive effects for almost everyone. For both of these, intensity and propinquity will be extremely low but the duration, certainty, fecundity, purity, and extent will be high. This may make the benefits seem diffuse, but when handling the global problem of climate change, no single facility will likely cause any substantial gains or losses, and this must be viewed in that light.
The list of pains in the scenario are limited, but include the opportunity cost of what could’ve been built on the site instead and the subsequent pains/pleasures that would have followed. Judging by the article, there were not many proposals to do much with the land, let alone something that would contribute to the local economy or help solve global problems in any significant way. The land had fallen into disuse, and the only alternative proposed was a drag racing track, which would not have created nearly as much benefits to the surrounding communities or to the world. The center of utilitarian mass falling towards the side of pleasure rather than pain was reflected in the opinions of those interviewed in the article, save for the resultant damaged pride of past coal workers. In this case, I agree with the conclusion delivered by the hedoinstic calculus, but now have a perspective of how vacuous and imprecise it is and how it can be manipulated by those with an ulterior motive to misconstrue a situation by warping what is in their opinion pleasures and pains.
The next scenario analyzed is from the Wired article “An Outdated Grid Has Created a Solar Power Economic Divide”. The article shows how increasing solar-augmentation of homes is not possible in poorer, predominantly Black neighborhoods due to their infrastructure being incapable of accepting the additional power source. From a hedonistic perspective, the benefits of in-home solar are great and are intense, long-lasting, certain, highly near, pure, and likely to be followed by further benefits. This is because in-home solar directly reduces the energy expenditures of the homeowner, often requires little maintenance and lasts for a long time, is unambiguously present after installation, localized, and may come with tax benefits.
On the other hand, in-home solar deepens the economic divide between affluent and poor communities due to the infrastructural gap, cutting off poorer neighborhoods from these benefits and making them comparatively poorer. This pain is less intense as it is not a direct tax on the poor, but a situation where only those in wealthy enough neighborhoods can benefit. It is long-lasting as upgrading electrical infrastructure is a lengthy, expensive, and political process that can take decades. It is certain in that more and more homes are adopting solar, yet remote as the effects are indirect and not direct. The solar gap is likely to increase with time and not be solved in a short amount of time, and will impact a large number of people as indicated by the high percentages of homes marked as incapable of supporting EVs in the paper published by Brockway in Nature. This calculus concludes that in-home solar widens an already present economic and racial gap in society, and portrays in-home solar almost as an evil. I would not say I completely agree with this hedonistic calculus, as it is necessary to make the shift to renewable energy sources. This type of analysis can be used by fossil-fuel company PR departments to hinder the transition, contributing to problems that have the potential to cause much more harm than in-home solar.
The final article to be analyzed through hedonistic calculus is entitled “A different kind of solar technology is poised to go big” in the nonprofit news site Grist. The article discusses the potential for cadmium telluride-based photovoltaics to become the dominant form of solar. The calculus for this situation is much easier than that of the last article as it is mainly technical (although noticeably geopolitical) and far less socioeconomic in nature. The primary benefits of cadmium telluride photovoltaics are that they require less material and do not rely on silicon supply chains.
These plusses are not particularly intense as, while affected by the coronavirus pandemic like many other supply chains, silicon is one of the most abundant and produced materials on the planet, which keeps costs low and supply (comparatively) high. The lower amount of material required is a plus but really serves to offset the comparatively low abundance, higher cost, and lower efficiency of cadmium telluride photovoltaics. The third plus is that they are easier to manufacture into bendable cells, which are useful but limited in scope compared to normal flat solar cells. Reading into the article reveals that the primary group to benefit from increased cadmium telluride photovoltaic production is nations who are geopolitically at odds with the main source of silicon-based solar cell production: China.
There are not any particularly intense pain points to be derived from increased cadmium telluride photovoltaics for most groups (besides China, which will be addressed) besides the opportunity costs of producing silicon photovoltaics, which are that silicon is cheaper, vastly more abundant, and more efficient in solar cells. From China’s perspective, cadmium telluride solar cells, even if produced in abundance, would not cause much cause for worry as cadmium and tellurium are among some of the rarest metals present on the planet, meaning that they will never be able to significantly compete with silicon-based cells.
This calculus implies that there may be some marginal geopolitical gains to be made by the US in investing in cadmium telluride solar cells, but that they can never be made in global quantities and are less efficient than silicon-based cells, making them of little help at best to the US, and of barely-if-at-all noticeable pain to China. I agree with the conclusions to be derived from this calculus, as the intensity of benefit to be had by the benefitting parties are so marginal and likewise for the parties suffering losses, that the overall results are close to negligable.