While I’ve written before about the trouble in making solar competitive with grid power, this is not true when the grid is being blown up by geurilla fighters on a regular basis. Over the past couple of years, Bechtel has been paid over 2 billion dollars, mostly to try to rebuild the Iraq electrical infrastructure. Perhaps it’s not their fault that power is only on in Bagdadh for 2 hours a day after these billions have been spent — but their might have been a better way.

Imagine if that billion had been directed at building a solar power system, with a lower-power grid for night power. A billion would have provided major stimulus to the solar industry, of course, and helped the companies that are working at making PV cost-effective. But it also would have generated a power infrastructure that was much harder to destroy in a civil war. Yes, they might take down sections of the grid, but these would only have been there for night and brownout power. Without them, people would still have had more power. And not just during the day. Mini “neighbourhood grid” systems could allow small areas to have backup diesel generators. Not quite as efficient as the big generators but much more difficult to take down. The “value” targets would still see their local panels and generators under attack, but that’s the way of it.

It seems odd to think of this in a country with so much oil. But doing this would have also had a major effect on greenhouse gas emissions. Putting solar into Iraq would have made the US responsible for major emission cuts. Cutting emissions there so we don’t have to cut them here.

Something to think about next time your country goes and destroys a foreign country’s power grid and then works to rebuild it. (Of course, ideally that’s never.)