Monetizing Light

Every milli-second of every day for the past 4.6 Billion years, at the center of our solar system nuclear fusion repeatedly has occurred, and will occur; two hydrogen nuclei collide and merge to form a single helium nucleus, thereby releasing energy which powers the sun, which creates light.  

As a form of electro-magnetic radiation, the nature of light is to emanate outward from its source, in the form of tiny discrete packets of energy called “quanta” or “photons,” and travel 93 Million miles in 8 minutes and 20 seconds whereupon they warm up a solar array on the roof of the School where I work. 

Since 2015 sunlight has been harvested upon that roof, with 430 panels, covering 8,000 square feet, generating approximately 135,000 kWh of electricity per year.  When sunlight bathes the solar array, electrons become energized and flow between cell layers, creating an electrical current. The flow of electrons is captured by metal plates and wires; thus, electricity is generated.  

Solar power generation was discovered in 1839, and the basic design of a solar collector has endured since the 1970s. It is worth noting, however, that for the past 1.3 Billion years, fungi, and for the past 700 Million years, plants, have been eating light, thereby producing oxygen while decreasing carbon dioxide.  Solar power is a stellar advancement, but cumbersome in comparison to the elegant simplicity of the plant kingdom.  Still though, let’s sound three cheers for human progress and our role in it!!! 

The embodied energy of the solar array (energy consumed to manufacture, ship and install the panels) is approx 260,050 kWh.  That amount was offset in 1.9 years and since then the roof’s array has been net positive.  Over the past ten years, the school has generated 780,010 kWh which means 842,641 pounds of carbon emissions were not produced, roughly equivalent to 424,754 pounds of coal, 5 tanker trucks of gasoline or 1.1 railcar of coal.  The school’s footprint is small, its impact enduring.  

By a financial sleight-of-hand the school is able to make money by converting light into power.  This is done by selling “Renewable Energy Credits” (REC) to the secondary market where large utilities or carbon-producing industries purchase them to meet state-mandated climate standards.  If this seems abstract, then you read well; the REC is a legally defined commodity separate and distinct from the physical electricity itself. 

You can spend a dollar only once, and so too, the consumption of energy.  What we monetize, then, is not the energy created and consumed but the carbon offset; we monetize not what was done, but what was not done.  A subtle distinction, and except for the law of the land, otherwise not possible.  

RECs have value not by fact, but by fiat; they have no monetary value except to high-carbon producing utilities and only by decree. In the year 2025, in these United States of America, the shared responsibility of clean air is legislated as a State’s right.  11 states have no REC program; the carbon “red” states are politically raging red (Deep South plus Nebraska, Wyoming and Idaho) while 11 states had programs that are now expired or repealed.  All of New England participates, while Maine ranks among the more stringent standards, with 2019 legislation passed to increase Maine’s portion of electricity supplied by renewable energy resources to 80 percent by 2030 and a goal of 100 percent by 2050.

Whether the REC market will continue is an open question, hotly debated as the climate continues to heat up.  While America looks back to its carbon rich past, China forges ahead with renewable energy.  The Economist reports: “The scale of the renewables revolution in China is almost too vast for the human mind to grasp. China generated 1,826 terawatt-hours of wind and solar electricity in 2024, five times more than the energy contained in all 600 of its nuclear weapons.  In the context of the cold war, the distinctive measure of a ‘superpower’ was the combination of a continental span and a world-threatening nuclear arsenal. The coming-together of China’s enormous manufacturing capacity and its ravenous appetite for copious, cheap, domestically produced electricity deserves to be seen in a similar world-changing light. They have made China a new type of superpower: one which deploys clean electricity on a planetary scale.”  And very likely the AI race will be won by cheap electricity rather than chips.

All of which brings to mind Martin Luther King’s statement: “it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated.”  The RECs provide a vehicle toward a lower carbon future, and the school participates, every minute the sun is shining.