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Some states now require electricity generators to produce or buy a certain percentage of their energy from alternative sources. Supporters say that the "renewables portfolio standard," or RPS, is a market-driven approach to getting renewable energy sources into the mix. An effort to pass a national RPS failed last year in Congress. The American Wind Energy Association (www.awea.org) is a big supporter of the RPS movement.

Personal incentives: love of the earth

New technologies, taxes, and credits can all be used to shape our energy future, but they may not be enough. In his recent book Energy at the Crossroads (MIT Press), Vaclav Smil argues that improving energy efficiency does not guarantee that a society will use less of it. In his sweeping survey of global energy trends, Smil, a professor at the University of Manitoba, concludes that the opposite is true, and we're the perfect example. Our society is brilliant at finding ways to do more work with less power, but even when it's corrected for a bigger population, our energy use rate keeps climbing.

In Smil's view, "shaping the future energy use in the affluent world is primarily a moral issue, not a technical or economic matter." The same goes for helping less fortunate lands achieve a quality of life that at least approaches ours. We have the tools to accomplish both tasks, he says, but what we lack is the right attitude. Along with a new open-mindedness about possible solutions, we desperately need to deepen our respect for each other and for the living planet that supports us.

Plentiful energy has fueled an era of great freedom and pleasure in our society, but it's time to start cutting back. A first step would be to cop to the violence that now supports our floating world of energy excess. Beyond that, making a few small changes to reduce personal energy use might seem merely symbolic, even naive, until you figure that we live inside a giant stadium wave. If you stand up for something, others will as well.

House of Wind

Wind harvesting is getting to be a home-grown affair again, thanks to a new crop of smaller, quieter turbines. What's more, many states now offer backyard wind (and solar) producers some form of "net metering," a service provided through local utilities. If you generate more power than you're using, the utility will credit you for the excess going back into the grid. For more information: www.awea.org/smallwind.

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