NOT RENEWABLES
Renewable energy technologies are the main hope of many who are concerned about sustainability. Renewable energy generation devices, whether making use of the sun, wind, earth or biomass, have become icons of a 'green future'.
The nature of renewable energy (eg fluctuations of source and lower efficiencies) and the history of renewable technologies (developed as small scale, alternative technologies) has meant that renewable energy generation can be an important component in sustainments. They tend to require less energy intensive lifestyles and workpractices that are more in tune with their energy supply.
However, current trends in renewable energy technology development are limiting their ability to be, in themselves, the source of sustainments:
1 Many people believe that 'technology will find a way'. However, our current growing addiction to technology (and particular to automated technologies, that remain on all the time) is precisely the thing that will cause escalating energy demand to outstrip even the capacity of non-renewable energy generation. Renewables will only have a chance of servicing our future needs if we drastically reduce those needs with regard to energy. Sustainments are built environments that facilitate major energy demand reductions.
2 Renewable energy technologies are not free of ecological impacts. Photovoltaic arrays for example require immense amounts of energy and water and many toxic chemicals to manufacture; and no-one yet knows what impacts their disposal will involve. Because renewable energy technologies work best with smaller scale units distributed over the supply area (rather than a large centralised infrastructure), these ecological impacts will be multiplied by the large number of units required. The extent to which renewables still contribute to the problem, and do not yet make in-roads into all our existing and past ecological impacts, means that they alone will not deliver sustainability. Sustainments make use of renewables, making up for their ecological debt in other ways, for instance, by being active sources of renewal.
