A funny thing about people is we don’t like change. And we sometimes feel guilty about not liking change. A lot of younger people say they love change. Can’t get enough of it. But try making veggie burgers instead of turkey for Christmas dinner and the kids may not love change as much as they think. Often, change means moving away from something we are good at and being good at something makes us feel comfortable.

Moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources can elicit the same feelings of moving away from something we are good at to something we might need to learn how to do. For instance, most of us know how to keep the lights on. Pay the electric bill. We aren’t born knowing how to pay bills but we learned. Putting solar panels on your roof and generating your own electricity means learning a new set of skills.

If you live in the north east it might mean figuring out how to get snow off the panels after a foot of the white stuff falls during one of our winter storms. It might mean figuring out how to put them on the roof without creating leaks. And there are other details that we know we would have to learn to run our own solar power plant.

So moving to renewable energy can be daunting. But if we learn things slowly, a little at a time, then we humans can accept change. In fact we usually learn to love it once we get our feet under us. But the question is, how do we get started moving to renewable energy if we haven’t already?

Well let’s start with the easiest thing you do; nothing. That’s right, your first step could be to do nothing but pay your electric bill. Many utility companies are bringing more renewable energy sources online every year. For instance, let’s say you live in El Paso Texas. Well, you are already using some renewable energy resources to run the computer you are using to read this post. Nice work.

According to the El Paso electric company website they are generating approximately 1063 megawatts of electricity in Texas using renewable sources. Okay, that isn’t going to run the world today, but we are just getting started.

Another thing you can do is the next time you buy a car, look to see if it is a flex fuel vehicle. Flex fuel usually means that the car can run on gasoline or ethanol that can be produced from all sorts of corn, grain, sugar cane and other plant matter. There is some controversy about how energy efficient the production of ethanol is and what it does to the cost of food prices around the world and…well you get the idea.

But the fact is that this is a step and we can work these other issues out as we develop our renewable resources. Yes I know that ethanol stations aren’t as popular as gasoline stations yet; but again this is a step. It’s easy; check to make sure your next car is flex fuel. Oh, and if you are wondering where to fill your new car up, take a look at the link for this post that shows locations of the more than 1,600 stations that sell ethanol for flex fuel vehicles.

These are just two steps that help us move with relative ease towards a full bore renewable energy society. And renewable sources are where we want to go. We all know it’s true; it just takes some getting used to. And there are other options coming along that will be just as easy to get started with. Hydrogen Fuel Cells for instance. BMW already has a flex fuel, gas-hydrogen fuel cell, prototype. In fact they are just waiting for the hydrogen recharging stations to get set up.

We are people and we don’t like change, but we are also the most adaptable animal on the planet. If you don’t think so, show me a cockroach that can live in Antarctica without our help. We do okay with change even if we don’t particularly like it. And if the first steps are as easy as do nothing, or buy a different car next time, then we can make those changes. And before you know it, we’ll all have our own windmills and solar cells generating free and renewable energy for our super sized plasma high def TVs.

BMW Hydrogen - Gas prototype
Flex Fuel stations around the United States
El Paso Electric: Renewable energy