'Green Energy' on the Rise

Lead: Some alternative energy sources are already cheaper than petroleum or coal, and many businesses are beginning to set their sights on them, to save money and to avoid blackouts.

NEW YORK - So the United States has a new energy crisis. Energy prices are soaring, and rolling blackouts are savaging high-tech states like California. Businesses are freaking out. When the lights go out, how do you power fancy new gigahertz computers? Rub two sticks together?

For the White House, there's only one solution: drill for more oil, and lots of it. Vice-President Dick Cheney - a former oilman himself - said the national goal would be to crank out one new electrical plant per week for the next twenty years. That means drilling for new fossil fuels in environmentally sensitive territory near the Yukon, relaxing environmental limits, and trying to seduce the Canadian government into running more pipelines across the tundra.

And as for conservation, alternative sources, sustainable ''green'' energy, all that tree-hugging stuff from the 1980s? Whatever, hippie. Cheney basically said the environment can pretty much go to hell; conservation isn't good for business. ''Conservation may be a personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy strategy,'' he said.

The thing is, Cheney is wrong - dead wrong. Cleaner and more efficient energy sources have made huge strides in recent years. Indeed, thanks to new advances in technology, some ''green energy'' is becoming as cheap as - or cheaper than - traditional oil-and-coal electricity, and many smart companies are already starting to move towards it.

True, it's still a tiny chunk of the energy supply, but observers expect green energy to grow quickly, for very non-altruistic reasons. ''Alternative energy isn't about personal virtue anymore,'' counters Tom Adams, head of energy analyst firm Energy Probe in Toronto. ''It's about a couple of basic desires - to save money, and not to get blacked out. That's good business sense!''

With that in mind, check out the state of art in just a few alternative energy sectors:

- Wind-powered electricity is almost glisteningly clean. It has also dropped 80 percent in price in the last 20 years, as wind-turbine companies in Denmark - the world leaders - began making enormous strides in quality, both in the turbines and in software for tracking the best winds.

And it's relatively cheap: wind-created electricity costs only about 5.8 cents per kilowatt hour, putting it on par with natural gas-produced electricity, according to the Wind Power Association of Canada. One caveat remains: to really have cheap wind power, you need good winds that blow steadily in one direction only, 24 hours a day. While this is generally true in great plains, many other areas don't have reliably good wind.

- Microturbines: traditional energy grids - with one major power plant supplying energy over a wide area - aren't terribly efficient. A lot of electricity is wasted when pumped a big distance. North American power is, on average, only 33 percent efficient, which is to say only 33 percent of the energy created by burning coal or oil is eventually delivered as electricity. That wretched efficiency translates into higher energy bills.

One solution? Generate the power yourself, and pocket the increased efficiency and reliability as savings. Big, energy-hungry companies have done this for years, owning their own power plants. But now mid-sized businesses are doing the same - by buying a ''microturbine'' that generates a few hundred kilowatts or less, enough for a single company.

Plunk it in your basement and it burns natural gas (or many other fuels), at efficiency on par with the grid. The big savings begin when you also use the microturbine to heat your offices, which can raise efficiency to a stunning 80 percent. and no more worries about brownouts; you control your source of power.

- ''Fuel-cell'' technology has been hacked around for decades, but is finally coming to fruition. The cells are powered by hydrogen, which is broken down to produce electricity and water, the only byproduct. They're super-clean, very quiet, and have almost no start-up problems (something that plagues diesel generators). That's why the US auto industry has invested about two billion dollars in developing fuel-cell systems for cars - almost half of which has gone to Ballard Power Systems Inc., the darling in this new area.

But car engines are only one part of Ballard's planned offerings. Indeed, commercial generators for small- and mid-sized businesses will hit the market first. This year, the Ballard will release a small, one or two kilowatt fuel-cell generator, co-branded with Coleman.

Still, there are a few hurdles here too. The technology is new, and thus hasn't reach full economies of scale. Buying a Ballard fuel-cell generator costs about 3,000 to 5,000 dollars per kilowatt of capacity, compared to 1,500 dollars for non-fuel-cell competitors. And hydrogen isn't easily commercially available yet. You can extract hydrogen from many other things like natural gas, but this produces greenhouse gases, reducing the ''clean'' quotient.

- Solar power isn't yet as cheap as, say, wind power. Today's photovoltaic systems produce power at about 7.9 cents per kilowatt-hour, once you amortize the cost of the equipment, according to a 1996 study by the California Energy Commission. But prices are slowly dropping by about five percent a year, according to Allen Barrett, CEO of the Newark, Delaware-based Astropower Inc., one of the world's bigger solar-cell manufacturers.

These new energy technologies are, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty more, like ''biomass'' fuel, plants that convert methane gas from garbage dumps, or geothermal power - using the earth's warmth to heat water.

In fact, one person who's using geothermal power is none other than... Dick Cheney. Earlier this year the media discovered that he's been using the technology to heat water at his Washington home - since it helps conserve power and cut his energy bills.

Maybe he knows something he's not telling us.

(COPYRIGHT IPS/FEATUREWELL)

* Clive Thompson is a regular commentator on technology and politics for National Public Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.