I Don't Want Energy Independence; I Want Energy INTERdependence

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My partner and I have been going to open houses lately, and lemme tell you, it’s weird time to be a first-time homebuyer. Despite interest rates falling slightly as of late, we are also looking down the barrel of a Trump presidency. To what degree will everything—rent, groceries, tech—get more expensive due to tariffs and deportations? 20% more expensive? 50%? What will the housing market will do between now and next summer? Will the two of us even be able to get married this time next year? How many munitions should we stock up before the zombie hoards come?

The vibes have been pretty apocalyptic over here, so it makes sense that at my Friendsgiving table yesterday, my all-queer friend group has once again brought up the idea of leaving society altogether and ✨starting a commune✨.

As young people who’ve been targeted by the government for our whole lives time, the ✨commune✨ exists in our collective imagination as the ultimate reprieve from society’s ills. Humanity sucks! Let’s just get 10 of our friends, fuck off to the middle of the woods, build some houses and grow our own food! It’ll be great!

My hot take is that I reject this isolationist, separatist view of the world. Sorry, friends! This is for a few reasons, the main one being that I want to save the world. Naïve, I know; what good has humanity done for us? What makes me think that the world would even accept my help? I believe that my role as a human being is in society: educating engineers to help the world transition to renewable energy, empowering everyday people to participate in the political process, and making the world a better place through education and collective liberation. I don’t want to leave society to only maybe ensure safety for 10 of my friends and say screw everyone else, I want to save all 7 billion of us.

That’s my idealistic, hope-filled way of putting it. If you’re willing to hear me out, here’s my darker answer: neoliberal individualism is a parasite that has infected our collective souls, including us on the Left. It’s by no means a simple binary, but in general, “fucking off to the woods” to build some huts with your friends away from society seems to be an exclusively white people activity. Meanwhile, when people of color organize, they do it for collective liberation, and it looks like strategizing to succeed in spite of capitalism: rent parties, large-scale mutual aid and education projects, and changing the law so that everyone can benefit from an improved society. As it’s said, “Black women are the ones working hardest to free themselves and everybody else”. I tend to follow Black women’s lead on lots of things, so I’m doing that here too. The ✨commune✨, and it’s been described to me, sounds a lot like neoliberal individualism, but for 10 people instead of 1 person.

No matter how you view it—the nice way or the accusatory way—we are all interconnected. What good does abandoning society do for the climate, other than reducing your own “carbon footprint”, itself a greenwashing attempt to convince you that your personal energy usage is more responsible for climate change than Big Oil is. What good does abandoning society do for the people America is slaughtering, other than fewer of your personal tax dollars contributing to the slaughter (an admirable goal to be sure, but I would personally rather participate in the political process and make my voice heard)? What good does abandoning society do when all water, including rainwater, now contains PFAS chemicals? In my view, our interconnectedness is inescapable; COVID-19 taught us that much. I genuinely don’t believe the world would be better off if all 7 billion of us broke off into little 100-person pods. We need all hands on deck, plus lots of new tech, to get the climate cleaned up from our mess.

I distinguish between independence and interdependence to highlight the ways in which we, as a species, need to (re)learn how to behave. Humans are special (at least we think we are) because of our social skills; that’s how we survived this many thousands of years despite all the hazards nature has to offer. Recently though, we’ve divided ourselves from each other to an incredibly unproductive degree. We think driving our friend to the airport is a burden. We spend all our time online because who wants to deal with people? (ugh!) We push away everyone who disagrees with us in favor of staying “pure” and untainted by diverging, Problematic opinions. Sure, in an abolitionist future, there will be a place for “exile” as a form of consequences for truly heinous harms. But my politics is one that does not push people away, it’s one that fights like hell to keep us together. Yes, I want everyone to have health care. Yes, I want everyone to have clean energy. We can all live abundantly in my hypothetical eco-socialist degrowth utopia!

With that said, let’s talk about solar energy.

Fossil fuels have long carried with them the myth of “energy independence”. At the scale of individual homes, powering your home with gasoline promises relative independence from the main energy grid, and thus from society. If you have a propane backup generator, that will keep you (and only you) safe when the power grid fails, so you better stock up on gas! At the societal scale, Big Oil tells us that we need to keep drilling, baby, so that we can be “less dependent” on “foreign oil” or other energy sources coming from abroad. Even those who promote renewable energy lean on the idea that converting to renewables will make us more independent from other nations, since (for example) we could generate our own solar or wind energy without relying on other countries. No matter what scale you’re looking at—your own house or your entire country—opening yourself up to the world is a vulnerability, a potential point of attack!! Independence good, dependence bad!!

Solar energy has the potential for a new way of thinking that breaks that binary. Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) are an emerging model of energy distribution where people who own solar panels (and also a solar battery) can send the energy they generate to their neighbors. Basically, the coal-fired power plant miles away isn’t the only source of energy generation; every home that “produces” solar energy (air quotes because there is solar energy raining down on us all day, for free, we just need to collect it) contributes to their local community.

As a future homeowner, this would mean that instead of buying a propane generator backup (which would spit out toxic gases and would only benefit me), my ultimate goal would be to have a solar battery backup, which could be used in a VPP to a) save me money, b) ensure that I have clean energy if there’s a widespread power outage, and c) generate energy for my neighbors when the grid is functioning normally.