Building a Density-Driven Grid

Many developing countries look to our utility grid with envy. Our access to technology and capital allow us to stretch services to just about anybody, but there is a point where a locality’s dwindling population density no longer warrants connection to the greater grid. With the amount of unavoidable renovation on the horizon and our increasing goal of making a more sustainable system, our grid should be retooled by density-driven metrics. Those areas that fall below a certain density threshold should not only have to supply their own services on site, but do so with sustainable systems.

Density continually proves to be closely linked to sustainability (definition?) and the utility grid is no exception. The means of connecting people to core services that they need to live is much easier to construct and functions more efficiently when people are closer together. Some urbanists hail the fall of the suburban model and the return to city centers by Americans, but the vision of scattered American metropolises is a tall order and one not likely to be filled any time in the foreseeable future. Even if they did succeed, rural development is still the source of nearly all of our food production, cementing it as a necessary component of our settlement patterns. In the end, rural and suburban dwellers still need core services for day to day function, but being tied into the grid may not be the best way to meet that need.

The State of the Grid

The true nature of our grid consists of more than just electrical power. Water, natural gas and sewage lines are all infrastructural veins that snake across the country and everyday we become more acquainted with the inefficiencies of our existing systems. Electric transmission and distribution average a 7% loss of generated power which was nearly 240 million kwh of power worth $19.5 billion in 2005 according to the IEA. Older cities like Syracuse, New York lose almost a quarter of their water through leaks and unauthorized use. By now we should realize that our resources are far from bountiful enough to simply throw away.

A new grid should be efficient and cast in the likeness of serving those that seek to contribute to that efficiency. The strongest utility networks should be built to supply services to the most people. On the contrary, purposefully distancing oneself habitation from certain levels of population density should result in relying less on the grid and more on environmentally conscious, self-sustaining systems. Not only would this make our grid run more efficiently, but it would tie more rural and suburban homes more closely to their own energy use patterns—perhaps making them more cognizant of what their lifestyles require.

As both taxpayers and ratepayers, our efforts to build the grid come at a great expense. These expenses are revisited continuously in the form of maintenance, ad infinitum. One of my qualms with suburban development is the amount of this time, money and materials exhausted to bring services to relatively few people. One half mile of sewer serves many more people in New York City than on a suburban street. It’s also true that the farther we stretch services from their source, the more energy it takes to get it there and the more we lose along the way. When it comes to per-mile-per-capita, we most likely spend the most on portions of the grid that serve the fewest amount of people in the least efficient way. The farther homes are built away from town and city centers, the fewer services should be provided.

Nick Rosen, author of recently published Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America, pitches a solid case for moving more people off of the grid (according to him the number of Americans is currently 1.75 million.) As he notes, “Most of us rely on the electricity grid (along with water and gas) in every aspect of our lives. But if the grid did not exist, would there still be a need to invent it?” In a recent article he claims that “Going off-grid is the wave of the future, not a return to the Stone Age.”

Now one could argue that the marketplace helps us to do this already. There are plenty of suburban communities with septic tanks instead of sewers, propane tanks instead of natural gas and pull their water from their own well. But this market construct is incomplete, failing to assess the externalities that have yet to make it to the bottom line of cost only because the full degree of their eventual effects have yet to be realized. Standards for remote utility systems should be held to a higher level with a lower net impact.

Drilling wells and depleting aquifers should be supplemented with rainwater capture and greywater filtration to minimize the amount we are tapping from the earth. After all of the engineering advancement in this country over the past century, we still use septic tanks as an acceptable means of removing waste. These systems are really just a long way of walking out back with your bleach or laundry detergent and dumping it right on the ground. These can and should be replaced with alternatives like anaerobic digesters.

Spreading the Weight Around

This vision would essentially cut any umbilical cords to rural development, namely farming communities. Though in need of sizable changes, farming remains one of the cornerstones of American ideals. As a country we put a high value on producing a surplus of food so resistance would be swift for a plan that appeared to marginalize U.S. farmers or residents that dot the gray area between suburban and rural zones.

Suburbanites would feel part of the effects as well, as I think they should. While I am not going to say that people should detach themselves from their love of less urban surroundings, I do think it’s necessary for them to realize that such a lifestyle is markedly less efficient and brings repercussions that extend far beyond a plot of grass wrapped in a white, picket fence. At the same time, I am willing to concede that we are not in a position to cripple suburban markets by pulling the plug on their existence without a little help.

For these folks I would propose that we help subsidize the means necessary to detach from the grid. Installing a list of suggested systems necessary to sustain living could get a bump from some kind of Federal, fiscal cocktail with some parts grants, some parts tax credits, some part low-interest loans. Before conservatives jump out of their chair, remember that we’re paying for this stuff anyway–if not as taxpayers, then as ratepayers.

The High Cost of Inefficiency

High transmission power lines can be strung up to the tune of $3.5 million per mile. Natural gas thoroughfares follow closely behind, upwards of $3.0 million. The infrastructure built far away from your home by private utility companies ends up coming back to you in the form of rate increases. When the resources get off their super highways costs still loom. One report from Pennsylvania townships pegged new water lines in roadside construction at $132,000 per mile with sewer adding another $237,600 a mile.

One article notes that San Diego has been in the process of taking its overhead power lines and sinking them underground to stem risks of outages and avoid costly maintenance. That makes sense, but it costs the city $1 million to $4 million a mile and is done at a snail’s pace of 25 miles per year (the city hopes to bury 1,200 miles worth.) The article unsurprisingly notes “Electric ratepayers have been covering the cost with an extra 3.5 percent added to each bill.” That’s +3.5% for the next 50 years.

Even if the rate of expansion of our grid slows, the amount of what we already have in dire need of repair—or outright replacement—will be enough to keep us occupied for decades. Our country has over 200,000 miles of electric transmission line. 300,000 miles of natural gas pipeline. The fact that it’s already there does not necessarily justify us sticking with our current model. Existing systems can even cost us more than new systems. The same Pennsylvania report found saw rehabilitation costs of existing water and sewer lines at $343,200 a mile when added excavation and removal is taken into account.

If we have to pay for something then let it be a system that functions cleanly, on site, with minimal materials. Put our investment in fixing environmental problems rather than perpetuating them. Instead of funding an inefficient system that we will be paying charges on indefinitely, let us contract the system and allow satellite development to exist on its own in a sustainable way.

Tightening up the reins on our grid has many positive benefits. Our grid becomes more energy efficiently, bleeding less power off into thin air and as a result, producing less in the first place. Our country saves money by not building long, thin appendages of a system and focusing, instead, on fortifying a more constrained grid. When combined with other policy measures like taxing greenfield and subsidizing infill, we could stem suburban sprawl by aligning our settlement patterns with a better respect for density. This in turn would make our public transit systems (like high speed rail) more convenient and efficient as it moved people from tighter pockets of habitation. Less virgin land would be slated for development, leaving more existing natural ecosystems intact. Not to be forgotten is that we would slowly be transforming our sources of energy into those befitting one of the most advanced countries in the world by producing cleaner power with less systematic waste.

What about the places where it’s too expensive or just plain impossible to procure clean water, consistent power, methods of heating and an opportunity to cleanly dispose of waste? Well, maybe we shouldn’t be building there.

Photo Credit: rivercityconstructioninc.com