This week in infrastructure systems: a family fight over how best to address climate change in the electric power sector, and a discussion of the importance of bridging social capital.
- Grist has announced a series of upcoming articles investigating the best path forward to wean the nation's power supply off fossil fuels. As an initial step along the way, they cover a debate between two groups of scientists with some disagreement about the optimal approach. On the one side, a group of researchers from Stanford University and Berkeley University argue that the nation's power grid can reliably transition to 100% wind, water, and solar power between 2050 and 2055. On the other side, a larger group of scientists, reflecting the findings of a number of groups including IPCC, NREL, NOAA, etc., that the nation would need to transition much more slowly and use a more diverse group of generation technologies. This is important because, as the second group cautions, "Policy makers should treat with caution any visions of a rapid, reliable, and low-cost transition to entire energy systems that relies almost exclusively on wind, solar, and hydroelectric power."
- Infrastructure supports strong communities by fostering a diverse number and type of community dimensions or functions. According to NIST, (see NIST GCR 16-001 for more details) this includes community culture and identity, and belonging and relationships. An article by Eric Liu of CityLab titled "The Strange Power of Weak Ties" suggests that we need to learn more about how our various lifeline technologies influence the strength of these community dimensions. While Liu does not directly explore the role of infrastructure in cultivating these dimensions, he does argue that our communities lack bridging capital, the ability to generate trust among unlike groups. Are there ways that our lifeline systems can help to develop bridging social capital?