2015 Articles

Biking and Renewables

Wagner, Gernot

There’s nothing quite like biking down clogged city streets, weaving in and out of traffic. For short distances, it’s faster than driving. It’s liberating. It’s fun. It also makes it painfully clear that most roads aren’t made for bikes.

We need to get off gasoline-powered vehicles, the same way we need to get off fossil-powered electricity.

I was cut off by yet another driver fixated on his phone while cycling to work, I got to thinking that this is how wind and solar electrons must feel as they try to navigate the electric grid. There, too, the infrastructure and rules were designed for the conventional, fossil fuel-based generators, not their smaller, greener counterparts.

Published on Ensia.com on October 1st, 2015.