Jonee Kulman Brigham

Introduction

How do we design for a sustainable future? Designers have a role to play at all scales: from designing a more resource-efficient product, to designing net-zero energy buildings and transit-friendly communities, to applying design thinking to systemic grand challenges. At all scales, cultural paradigms steer direction, consciously, or not. Systems analyst, Donella Meadows, argues that the most effective way to affect real change is to change the paradigms that guide our actions (Meadows, 2008). Our world view affects our policies and approaches which affect our practices and products that have consequences that may or may not support sustainability.

One opportunity to affect how our built environment reflects and influences our culture that deserves attention is our infrastructure, and more specifically of interest in this paper, our electrical infrastructure: the composite of power generating plants, long distance transmission lines, substations, local distribution lines, connections to our buildings, and the operating and governing agreements that affect our use and benefits from the electric system as a whole. Our existing electrical infrastructure in the United States is, in some ways, a completed design problem, solved by electrical corporations and engineers, reflecting a cultural paradigm of economic growth and technical efficiency. But as Gretchen Bakke (2017), cultural anthropologist, in her book on the history and future of the electric grid notes, the economic, technological, and political influences on the development of the U.S. electrical grid have created a giant machine that is increasingly inadequate to address current needs and concerns (Bakke, 2017). Of particular urgency, is the role of the electric system in climate change, with estimates that to avoid worst impacts, we need to shift to getting 80 percent of our electricity from renewables and nuclear power by 2050 (Meyer, 2018). In addition, our electric system faces other challenges including the vulnerability of power plants to terrorism, lack of power grid reliability, environmental impacts other than climate change, and the movement towards decentralized power generation raising new technological issues. These challenges call for a reexamination, and adaptation of current solutions. In lesser developed countries, there is an opportunity for a complete rethinking of electric power approaches. With these open issues in something so pervasive as our electric infrastructure, there is an opportunity for designers to play a role, not only as aestheticians and technicians meeting client needs, but as people trained in creative problem definition who can ask larger questions as to how a new or adapted electrical infrastructure might support a new, more sustainable culture.

But where to begin? It is generally agreed, that in order to question something, it is good practice to first understand how it came to be. So, it seems useful to start with the question of “How does our electric infrastructure reflect the culture that created it and how sustainable was that culture?” Towards this aim, this paper will explore how American culture’s implementation of electrification in the first half of the twentieth century, both reflects that culture and reveals the culture’s unsustainability, concluding with observations on what we can learn from this as we question and re-design the approach to electrical infrastructure for the future.

Sustainability and Culture

Of course, there isn’t a single “Sustainable Culture” nor a single “American Culture.” However, for purposes of comparison, these terms will be used to describe general tendencies and illustrate the implications of culture on the technology of electric infrastructure. For a long time, a common definition of sustainability was “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” adapted from the definition of sustainable development in the World Commission on Environment and Development’s 1987 report, Our Common Future (Edwards, 2005). This and similar definitions helped to unite sustainable culture, centered on the provision of human needs over time. Environmental history includes many narratives that address the relationships of humans, technology, nature, and sustainability. Increasing awareness and attention to global anthropogenic disruptions like climate change as well as disruptions to water and land ecosystems, have created increased urgency and a search for new narratives to describe our dilemma, such as the Anthropocene (Crutzen, 2002), which posits that human activity has so changed the earth that it warrants a new geologic era. This may describe and perhaps diagnose our planetary dysfunction, but other authors (Monastersky, 2015; Moore, 2015; Bauer, 2016; Haraway, 2015; J. K. Brigham, 2017) have concerns about what “Anthropocene” may imply or encourage including questions of which humans are to blame, whether the blame rests on capitalist systems more than humans inherently, and if the term, retains the dualism of man and nature, in contrast to our understanding of our integral existence. Despite the evolving and multifaceted narratives of “sustainable culture,” and in order to support the sustainability-based comparison in this paper, the following discussion is organized by some categories that distinguish sustainable culture. These categories are: balance and interdependence (of economic, social, and environmental value systems even as those hierarchies are questioned), technology-nature relationship (even as this division is questioned), time and change (including questions of growth and resilience), and scale and place (as relates to regional-global strategies and perception). The list is not all-inclusive, and is drawn from multiple sources in the sustainability movement since there is no definitive source for describing the varied and evolving culture of sustainability.

Balance and Interdependence of Value Systems

One aspect of sustainable culture, is a three-part value system that balances economic, social and environmental values. This is not just about tradeoffs between three competing value systems, but also recognizes the interdependent nature of the three parts (Edwards, 2005). Different groups within sustainable culture may be primarily aligned with one part, but as a whole, sustainable culture still recognizes the need to address all three value systems. These value systems are also broadly interpreted with each category. Sustainable economic value systems are not just about profit, gross national product and shareholders, but encompass economic wellbeing, fair wages, and benefits for all workers around the world. Social well-being is also interpreted broadly to encompass all of the factors that contribute to individual and community well-being, from economic and health issues, to a concern for meaningful work and access to nature and beauty. The ecological value system is not just concerned with the “mechanisms” of nature and how they pragmatically serve society, but also the rights of all species, including our own, to use and enjoy natural environments. Increasingly, the three parts are also differentiated in hierarchy. For a long time, they had been represented equally in a three-part Venn diagram. Moir and Carter have examined the shifting diagrammatic story of sustainable values from the three-part diagram toward more hierarchical diagrams where economic systems, are a subset of societal systems, which are a subset of natural systems, introducing a more accurate reflection of dependencies (Moir & Carter, 2012). But this approach can still lack the complexity of an ecosystems view such as conceptions of the earth as a living ‘Gaia’ where we exist as part of Earth, in reciprocity with all its beings (Suzuki, 2002; Garrard, 2012; Kimmerer, 2014).

In the first half of the twentieth century, the implementation of electrification did not generally reflect a sustainable concept of an interdependent balance of value systems. At this time value systems were split between competing subcultures primarily centered in economically-focused capitalism, and social-equity focused socialism, with much less attention paid to ecological values.

Initially, distribution and access to electricity amongst Americans was determined for the most part by corporate, private sector forces, and reflected the high value they placed on profits. Initially power lines were focused primarily in densely populated urban areas since the private sector deemed rural lines not profitable. Although private utilities did serve more rural areas in the west, these were primarily in areas where there was a greater concentration of demand, thus economic return, due to agricultural irrigation pumping in addition to traditional uses (Stuart, 1929; Nye, 1989). Underscoring this connection between implementation and culture, is the fact that in more socialistic countries that saw electrification as public service rather than a business commodity, the balance of urban and rural electrification was more evenly distributed (Nye, 1990). The lack of rural electrification by privately-led electric corporations was not widely remedied until progressives within government with a different value system took on transmission distribution issues. Progressive, government-led efforts at electrification and interconnection reflected values placed on equality and right of access for all. With the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, government stepped in to support getting power lines to rural areas that the private sector would not serve (Energy Information Administration, 1996). The government offered low interest loans to rural cooperatives making it economically possible to extend transmission lines into the countryside while also setting up more localized economic control of electric supply.

Electrical interconnection was another issue that further illustrates the split between competing economic and social value systems represented by the capitalist-oriented private sector and the progressives in government respectively. The complexity and resources needed to address the interconnection issue helped to create cooperation between corporate interests and government although not to the point of achieving a substantial integration of value systems. Leonard DeGraaf (1990), compares two such public-private efforts in the 1920s relating to electrical interconnection planning in the Northeast: The “Super Power” plan and the “Giant Power” plan. While supporters of both plans sought to address challenges of increased demand by fostering electric interconnection, and recognized the need for private – government cooperation in this endeavor, their different approaches and results further reinforce the capitalist-progressive divide. Giant Power supporters led by a progressive politician and engineer, saw the need for private – public cooperation, but also sought greater power board controls on electric corporations, mandating rural electrification, and enforcing rate-setting practices to protect the residential consumer. In contrast, the Super Power plan was led by conservative politicians and engineers, with private sector support. The private sector supporters’ interest in government cooperation was largely driven by the need for government financing of the interconnection infrastructure and they promoted retaining corporate control of electric generation and distribution with minimal government oversight or mandates. In fact, once the economy improved and electric holding companies were able to provide the financing, the electric corporations abandoned the Super Power plan in favor of even less government involvement (DeGraaf, 1990).

The way the competing socialistic and capitalistic camps interpreted the implications of electrical interconnection also reveals their attitudes toward the concept of interdependence itself. Interconnectedness was used by socialists’ subculture to support the idea of cooperative power, which they felt should lead naturally to cooperative economics. Nye (1990) cites Ronald Kline from his paper, “Electricity and Socialism: The Career of Charles P. Steinmetz.” In this, Steinmetz, an engineer at General Electric is quoted, “The relation between the steam engine as a source of power and the motor is thus about the same as the relation between the individualist [capitalist] and the socialist the one is independent of everything else, is self-contained, the other, the electric motor, is dependent on every other user in the system. That means, to get the economy from the electric power, co-ordination of all the industries is necessary, and the electric power is probably today the most powerful force tending towards co-ordination, that is cooperation [socialism]” (Nye, 1990, p. 167).

In contrast, the concept of interconnectedness was used by capitalist culture to rationalize the need for mega-corporate control for coordination as it would not be practical to run multiple competing power lines to customers. While public control of utilities could solve this issue, preference for private control reflected a concern about political corruption, the need to foster economically sustainable business models, and to avoid the less popular socialist tendency to take over private business by the state (Nye, 1990). Thus, interconnectedness of electrical technology was used by capitalists to reinforce their arguments for independence from government or social control rather than interdependence.

Ecologically-based value systems also played a role in the implementation of electrification in the first half of the twentieth century although they were not as pervasive a force as social or capitalistic value systems. While the majority of electrification projects did not elicit significant environmental concerns, there were notable exceptions. Some environmental leaders, such as John Muir, worked for wilderness preservation, free from artifacts of electrification and other elements of the industrial landscape (Nye, 1989). Early in the twentieth century environmentalists were influential in challenging proposed dam projects such as proposed at Hetch Hetchy Valley that would impact the recently formed Yosemite Natural Park, and the proposed expansion of hydro-electric power plants at Niagara Falls that threatened to greatly reduce its flow. Both of these sites had already been established in the public mind and experience as places of enjoyment of nature and the environmentalists were able to garner widespread public support for these causes. While the Hetch Hetchy dam project did end up proceeding in 1913, it was only after a heated national debate that brought light to the strong wilderness preservation sentiment and strengthened the environmental movement (Nash, 2001; Righter, 2005). In the case of Niagara Falls, the environmentalists were more successful and with legislation in 1906 and a treaty in 1909, the proposed massive expansion of power plants at the falls did not proceed (Righter, 2005).

However, as Nye (1994) points out, other natural sites that were not as well known or valued did not enjoy the same wide-spread public attention to mitigate development of electrification efforts (Nye, 1994). Americans’ value placed on nature was limited and selective. Transmission lines were constructed across the landscape without regard to natural or aesthetic disruption, and dams caused huge changes to natural water system flows, with little consideration given to ecosystem consequences and displacement of communities. In response to the impacts of electric infrastructure, on the natural landscape public outcry was minimal, resulting in little response by utilities, or lawmakers tasked with regulating their activities (Calkins, 1930; Levy,1997).

While all three value systems of sustainable culture were represented to some extent in patterns of electrification in the first half of the twentieth century, this occurred through a competitive battle between capitalist, socialistic, and occasionally ecological values, not a recognition of the interdependence of these value systems. In addition, the value systems were not present in the broadly understood manner sought by sustainable culture, for example, the dominant capitalistic conception of economic performance at the time was primarily for the benefit of the corporation and its shareholders, not the economic well-being of the larger society.

Technology-Nature Relationship

The attitude about the relative role of technology and nature also reveals the sustainable values of a culture. Sustainable culture tends to believe that technology is subordinate to nature, but powerful enough to disturb nature’s balance, or at least to change nature’s conditions in ways not favorable to human and other life forms (William McDonough Architects, 1998). The humility about technology implied in sustainable culture is important in order to remain open about lessons we can learn from nature, and to avoid over confidence in our ability to “fix” any problems our lifestyles and technologies introduce. As sustainable narratives with a more integral view of humans and nature advance, so too, does the recognition that human technology can no more be set apart in dualistic ways from nature than can, humans themselves. Sustainable culture’s tendency toward humility and seeing humans as integrated parts of larger natural systems, owes much to indigenous environmental thought (Kimmerer, 2014; J. K. Brigham, 2017). One of the first steps to creating a more desired infrastructure is to start noticing it and how it mediates our relationship with Nature. Harold Fromm (1996) has noted that perhaps part of our disconnect with nature is rooted in the seamless way technology mediates it for us, so that we no longer realize where things come from and where they go to (Fromm, 1996).

For the most part, this humility about the role of technology in relationship to nature is not reflected in the ways that electrification was implemented in the first half of the twentieth century. Instead, during this period, most Americans held technology to be superior to nature and as a means to enhance nature (Nye, 2003). In “Technology, Nature and American Origin Stories,” David Nye (2003), refers to an American belief system of “second creation,” a term he cites from a published commentary by an anonymous American in 1843. This holds that technology is the means to progress and nature is simply “raw material waiting to be improved” (Nye, 2003). As this concept was reflected in electrification, power lines were run through landscapes without regard to views of nature, visual effect, or impact on ecosystems. The power grid was largely driven by economics and coordination with the earlier implementation of land surveying technology whereby the landscape was divided into equal square grids for ease of sale, disregarding particulars of landscape form (Nye, 2003).

This acceptance, if not appreciation, of man-made technologies taking over nature is reinforced early on in the development of long-distance transmission lines according to Eugene Levy (1997) in “The Aesthetics of Power: High Voltage Transmission Systems and the American Landscape.” He points out that the American public was generally not bothered by the implementation of cross-country transmission lines, and the lines were sometimes even praised as a sign of progress. In contrast, urban low voltage lines were disliked, and efforts made to require under-grounding them. This was partly because it was deemed feasible to do so for the shorter distances and lower voltages involved (Levy, 1997).

Levy goes on to say that it was not until later, mid-century, beautification movements that a dislike of long-distance lines became an issue, yet it was still not economically feasible to underground them. He cites Samuel Hays’ argument that this increased attention to landscape beautification is a reflection of the evolution of American consumerism to include access to beautiful landscapes as part of the ever-improving American standard of living (Levy, 1997).

The technology-over-nature attitude of Americans in this period is also reflected in their reactions to electrical generation where the interaction of technology with nature is more direct. According to Nye (1994) in American Technological Sublime, the domination of nature by technology, for example, electrical infrastructure of transmission lines, but especially dams and power plants, was a great source of pride and fascination to Americans. In a sense, Nye says, the awe that might have been felt for natural phenomena like rushing rivers and waterfalls -- often referred to as an experience of the sublime -- was transferred to the technology that sought to tame and harness natures power. This feeling he refers to as “technological sublime,” a term coined in the 1960s by Perry Miller (Nye, 1994, p. xv).

Thus, in terms of the technology-nature relationship overall, American culture in the first half of the twentieth century did not exhibit characteristics of a sustainable culture in its implementation of electrification. In contrast to sustainable culture’s attempt to make technology that is in harmony with nature’s rules, the American culture of the time took a stance of technological superiority to nature, even in their good intentions to “improve upon” nature’s original creation.

Time and Change

Another mode of thought that distinguishes sustainable culture is its attitude about time and change. Even the word ‘sustainable’ implies the incorporation of time. Sustainable culture tends to see the long view, and to accept change as part of a response to a cyclical nature of time in which feedback loops let us know how to adjust what we are doing. Change is introduced to fine tune the balance of systems (Meadows & Club of Rome, 1972; Edwards, 2005). An influential book in the environmental movement in the 1970’s, Limits to Growth, argued that we cannot have endless growth when it comes to nature’s systems which have ranges within which we must operate (Meadows & Club of Rome, 1972). Sustainble culture also increasingly includes resilience concepts that plan for adaptability to inevitable changes and disruptions over time through diversity, redundancy, feedback loops, and modularity vs over-connectedness (Walker & Salt, 2006). Design theorist, Thomas Fisher (2009), contrasts this with ‘fracture critical’ systems that have grown too interconnected and efficient (versus redundant) making them subject to collapse (Fisher, 2009). By anticipating these cycles in human and natural systems (and the electric grid) we could potentially pre-empt them to prevent harm to people, ecologies, and economies.

In contrast to growth limits and cyclical and resilient concepts to time and change, American implementation of electrification in the first half of the twentieth century generally reflects unsustainable attitudes. Gretchen Bakke (2017), in her history of the U.S. grid, points to the move toward ever-larger, more interconnected, and efficient electrical infrastructure, subject to blackouts and fires when subject to stresses and unanticipated events (Bakke, 2017). The electric grid was also seen in a context of limitless growth. Although, some subcultures of the time had reservations about newness, the dominant ideal of progress and modernity that characterized the time, implied a linear mindset of forward movement to ever new and improved scenarios for life. The utility industry saw the potential for seemingly endless economic and market growth. In a 1930 article in Public Utilities Fortnightly, one author states, “At present there is no limit in sight to the output in kilowatt hours. Every present trend indicates that the demand for electric current and gas will continually increase” (Babson, 1930, p. 72). Another article in 1929 tells of farm electrification experiments that may lead to the 100% electric farm with electric, remote control tractors, and electric soil treatment and pest control (Stuart, 1929, pp. 148-149).

Early electrical appliance design and advertisements reflected the shifting popular attitudes about electricity. Some reflected ambivalence to newness early on, when the general public was adjusting to the idea of electricity. In Electrifying America, Nye (1990) notes that electrical appliances were often designed to look like their traditional counterparts reflecting the American nostalgia at the time towards the traditional, pre-industrial society. But during the 1930s electrical appliances were promoted for their modernity and newness (Nye, 1990). Government promotion of rural electrification in the 1930s also emphasizes modernity and its benefits. In the 1940 film, Power and the Land, exaggerated, before-and-after scenes show a farm family’s shift from a life of drudgery to leisure due to electrification and the appliances and machinery it made possible. Embracing this move to modernity, the narrator even refers to the newly constructed power transmission lines as “liberty trees for farmers” (Kline, 1997, p. 24).

The extent of the extreme optimism of the utility industry and the promotional government message of a wholly transformed lifestyle through electric modernization may all seem overdone and out of place in today’s society, although modernity is still a major theme of advertising. They are also out of place in sustainable culture, that has far less optimism about technology’s ability to solve all problems and that generally seeks equilibrium rather than ever- increasing growth as the destination of change over time.

Scale and Place

Sustainable culture tends toward smaller and more local approaches. It seeks “appropriate scale”, which is usually understood to be smaller than the prevailing scale of approaches inherited from the era of industrial expansion. This scaling down is evident in sustainable- related movements from New Urbanism with its scaling down of town planning to form “walkable communities” (Katz, Scully, & Bressi, 1994), to the movement towards on-site power generation and water collection (Living Building Challenge, 2016), to the “Not so Big House” and simplicity movements that aim to scale down residential life and the home environment (Susanka & Obolensky, 1998). In addition, sustainable culture tends to favor regionalism. In Cradle to Cradle (2002), the authors promote regionalism saying, that “human systems and industries,” in order to be sustainable should be based on “local material and energy flows, and to local customs, needs, and tastes, from the level of the molecule to the level of the region itself,” (McDonough & Braungart, 2002, p. 123). Globalization is seen as not only stripping products, architecture, and culture of their history and uniqueness, but also is associated with a singular focus on economics seeking the cheapest labor pools, while expending undervalued (economically) energy resources for long distance transport of products which are manufactured utilizing unsustainable approaches, materials, health standards, and waste management. Regionalism is also favored for its acknowledgement of the parameters of the natural resources of a place.

In terms of scale and place, American implementation of electrification in the first half of the twentieth century generally reflects neither the modest scale nor regionalist approach favored by sustainable culture. Initially, technological limitations and natural resource proximity did lead to a more region- based location of power plants in relation to their end uses. In the east, and initially in the west, location of industrial centers wishing to use electric power, needed to be nearby power plants, because of the limits of distance for transmitting electricity when direct current was still used. However, as newer technologies were developed, resource-associated industrial locations became less of an issue. As alternating current technology that could transmit longer distances became more prevalent just before and during the turn of the century, it freed industrial centers from this proximity and allowed power plants to locate near sources of water power, while industrial centers could locate near existing cities or rail lines. For example, after building a dam to power a factory to be built adjacently in Folsom, California, the owner decided instead to utilize the new alternating current technology and transmit electricity 20 miles away to Sacramento where he built his factory instead (Nye, 1989).

While not the dominant form of implementation there was a notable movement for local municipal control of electric power in the late 1920s and 1930s. Jay Brigham, in Empowering the West (1998), cites many examples of small Midwestern towns for whom the move to municipal control of power was a high-profile issue and influenced local politics – perhaps even national politics by extension (J. L. Brigham, 1998). In towns like Lanesboro, Minnesota, Stark, Kansas, and Sikeston, Missouri, voters strongly supported a move to municipal power, in place of already existing privately owned systems. The reasons most commonly argued were that the voters perceived and saw evidence from neighboring towns for lower rates through public ownership and voter’s desire to keep the profits from electric system operation in the local economy. The desire for lower rates was linked in many cases with a distrust of the private utility in terms of offering fair rates. In some cases, such as Yoakum, Texas, the motivation for municipal ownership was so strong, that when the private utility would not sell the electric system, the town funded and built their own system, even though apparently the existing system was adequate (J. L. Brigham, 1998).

Dominating the market of electrification were large, more centralized, private corporations. Companies such as General Electric and Westinghouse, not only sold electricity but also the appliances and lighting equipment that used electricity, thus encouraging a greater electric demand. The electric corporations grew, often by acquiring small appliance and lighting companies (Nye, 1990; Bakke, 2017). As they grew, smaller manufacturing plants were closed in place of larger, more cost-efficient larger ones. Utilities argued, that their business was different than other types, that their regional monopolies made them more efficient and that electric utilities were a “natural monopoly” (Nye, 1990). While some said that this argument could be used to rationalize widespread public ownership, utilities countered that the downside of this would be corruption of public officials, lack of good business practices and capital investment in an effort to please voters with low rates, and further, that the move to public ownership was a move toward socialism (Nye, 1990).

These two competing ideas about scale and place were expressed in multiple ways. Where large corporate presence was in place, competition from efforts for more regional control were discouraged. For example, the small town of Sullivan, Missouri wanted to build its own power plant in order to keep rates down and profits in the community, but was held up by a law suit by the private power company that had been providing them power (J. L. Brigham, 1998). Other battles between private utility and municipal ownership broke out in the 1930s in places such as Muncie, and Huntington Indiana (Nye, 1990). One hybrid of regional versus more centralized approaches was that of the “Giant Power” plan for electrical interconnection in the north east. As Leonard DeGraaf (1990) explains, the progressive supporters of the Giant Power plan recognized the need for some larger entity to connect and coordinate the disbursed electrical supply and demand in order to provide more flexibility in meeting growing electrical demand. However, unlike the competing, conservative, “Super Power” interconnection plan discussed earlier, Giant Power supporters promoted a division of control for generation, transmission, and distribution. They supported regional distribution centers, proposing that rural distribution cooperatives have access to interconnected electrical transmission at whole sale prices, just like the larger corporate electrical corporations. Giant Power supporters also sought regional centers of power generation based on coal mine locations to minimize transport of fuel and to support local economic growth. Interestingly, supporters of the competing, Super Power interconnection plan also used regional issues to critique the Giant Power plan, arguing that power plants should instead be located along coasts and rivers, near abundant water resources needed for cooling processes in the power plant (DeGraaf, 1990).

Large scale centralized approaches to electrical power generation, transmission and distribution generally prevailed. The resulting dominant pattern of large, centralized plants in turn shaped and reflected American culture. Many of the large, central plants created huge spectacles of dams and power stations, such as at Niagara Falls that attracted tourists to this “technological sublime,” creating a sense of awe when faced with the size and power of the endeavor and reinforcing American admiration of technological mastery (Nye, 1994). Government officials were well aware of the tourist potential of these sites and the importance of the public impression of the facilities. A visitor’s gallery was part of the Hoover Dam, and even the landscape and approaches to dams were considered as part of a dramatic visitor experience (Nye, 1994). While economic forces may have led to the creation of the immense scale of power generation, American culture’s appreciation and fascination with that scale, certainly did nothing to curb further development along those lines.

In contrast to sustainable culture, the patterns of electrification in the first half of the twentieth century were dominated by a large, centralized approach. The tendency was toward ever larger conglomerations of production, and transmission, with centralized distribution being more split amongst progressives and conservatives. However, even the progressives in government supported the immense central government hydro-electric dam projects, although they intended to offer the wholesale power to small distribution cooperatives as well as large utilities

Redesigning the Grid for Sustainability

Examining the implementation of electrification in the first half of the twentieth century reveals the gaps between American culture of that time and a sustainable culture in areas of: balance and interdependence of value systems, the technology-nature relationship, time and change, and scale and place. But what does this mean for us today? While we have inherited a grid that reflects early 20^th century values, we can recognize that values and culture drive design, question the underlying values in the forms and operation of our current technology, and redesign to adapt the electric grid based on current and emerging sustainable values. We can use this sustainable examination of the inherited grid as a way to generate critical questions to guide our adaptive design and encourage efforts in a sustainable direction.

How can we redesign the grid reflecting a balance and interdependence of economic, social, and natural value systems? There are promising trends as businesses, cities, and nations, recognizing the economic and social cost of inaction, express a commitment to meeting greenhouse gas reduction goals. And efforts like the Green New Deal integrate an acknowledgement of interdependence into proposals that work across economic, equity, and ecological systems in a synergistic way, addressing environmental justice, economic growth with green jobs, in a way that addresses the environmental climate challenge.

How can we redesign the grid reflecting a sustainable technology-nature relationship? There is also progress here as we use technology to dynamically respond to natural cycles and conditions, instead of trying to master them. Renewable technologies allow us to respond to nature’s limits of climate stability. Smart grid and energy storage development allow our grid to better adapt to variable solar and wind resources. Our technological sublime and story of ‘second creation,’ having grossly disrupted the planet, may turn us to a new humility toward nature (J.K. Brigham, 2017), although efforts at geo-engineering the climate may point to an opposite reaction.

How can we redesign the grid reflecting a sustainable approach to time and change? After over 30 years of warnings, it seems that mainstream culture is recognizing some limits to growth, as it realizes the current and near-term implications of climate change. Many innovations in resilient grid planning address the inevitability of change and disruption, and complement strengthening and hardening the grid, with building in flexibility and redundancy through strategies like microgrids, distributed generation, and energy storage, as well as smart grid improvements in communication and management across the network. The narrative may be shifting from conglomeration and centralization of the past, to decentralization, but the idea of time marching toward progress and modernization may still hold. While past modernization and electrification grew customer base for electric utilities, our current modernization of smart grid and fuel-shifting to electrify transportation and heating, is driven by climate concerns, although electric utilities may also stand to benefit while fossil fuel companies lose their markets. The narrative of “drawdown” is one of recognizing over-growth, and pulling back to right-size in terms of CO2 ppm. Progress narratives are shifting from growth where more and bigger is better, to stability is better, working within cycles and right-sizing for desired climate stability that supports life.

How can we redesign the grid reflecting a sustainable approach to scale and place? Like the growth of municipal utilities of the last century, there is still a place for decentralized electric generation, and control. The rapid growth of community solar shows the appeal of local energy, not only to harness rate savings, but also to participate in expressing environmental community values. As discussed, downscaling electrical interconnection with microgrids also provides resilience benefits. Rooftop solar is also growing, showing a desire for even more localized energy generation, though most is still grid-tied.

Conclusion

Designing for a sustainable future is a complex and immense challenge. The problem of scale for the electric grid occurs in the expansiveness of the electric grid itself, as well as its expansive regional and planetary impacts. While our image of the Earth shrunk upon viewing the famous “Earthrise” photo of the Apollo program, yielding a scaling down of our concept of the Earth as a tiny object in space, it is at the same time too large to comprehend (Cohen & Elkins-Tanton, 2017). The concept of ‘Hyperobjects,’ coined by Timothy Morton (2013), explores the challenge of things so large and encompassing that we cannot stand outside them, nor create ‘meta-languages’ that can encompass them (Morton, 2013). Climate change can be seen as such an object as well as the electric grid itself. Perhaps this is why we need narratives of the grid and its impacts to help make sense of the scale and complexity.

Cultural narratives and their paradigms steer how we use and apply technology and affect its outcomes. This makes awareness and intention about those paradigms a critical component of designing a sustainable future. At this time of energy transition, with the future of the electric grid’s operation and structures in flux, it is necessary to question the inherited patterns and values that shaped the grid, and apply our best, forward-looking, sustainable paradigms to reimagining how we generate, transmit, distribute, sell, and use electricity. As in the past, those designing the creation and operation of the grid, don’t just select which values to apply, but participate in the storytelling that frames guiding paradigms and resulting directions. In a 1921 issue of Electrical Review, the author says, “…public utilities in reality are merely the unifying agency between man and the forces of nature” (Rose, 1984, p. 503). But as shown above this ‘unifying agency’ narrative carried values contrary to sustainable culture—in terms of human-nature relationships, and also our social and economic values as a community. If the grid unified humans and nature, it was by subsuming nature into the human story of progress.

With a historical and systems understanding, the approach to electric infrastructure needs to be redefined as a holistic sustainable design problem (not just an engineering, or economic problem) that calls for a self-conscious reflection of what cultural values and modes of thought we want to guide the design process as well as what environmental, social, and ecological implications we want to come from the design solutions. This design process could lead in many directions, but if it is to reflect and support a sustainable culture it will need to embody a holistic integration of social, economic and ecological value systems, be integrated and careful with natural ecosystems, be planned as part of an approach to a society seeking equilibrium within nature, able to adapt in response to feedback loops (including evolving concepts of sustainability) and the inevitability of change and disruption, and likely be locally-based and appropriately-scaled, in order to support all of the other goals. Then perhaps our new electric grid can fulfill its potential to “unify man and nature” – this time in support of sustainability, where we place ourselves and our technology within a larger story of nature’s living systems.

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