C A N A D A'S N A T
I O N A L N E W S P A P E R
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Toronto, Saturday, August 4, 1990
GLOBAL GRID
Buckminster Fuller's idea of a global
energy system is back in favor
A light seen round the world
By Mary Gooderham, Applied Science Reporter
GREG Lyttle wants to read by light generated in Siberia.
But rather than move to the remote river where hydroelectricity
is produced, he plans to transport it from the Soviet
Union to his Vancouver home.
He is head of the Canadian chapter of an organization
called Global Energy Network Institute or GENI that
has revived an idea first proposed by inventor R,
Buckminster Fuller two decades ago.
Supporters claim their initiative could have benefits
from ending hunger to eliminating global debt and
cleaning up the environment. But they first have to
construct a huge extension cord around the earth and
convince a good number of skeptics. "The
world is catching up with Bucky Fuller. It was only
a matter of time," said Bonnie Goldstein, a researcher
at the Los Angeles-based Buckminster Fuller Institute.
The resurgence or Mr. Fuller's ideas of synergy,
co-operation and livingry makes
sense at a time when communications, trade, political
changes and concerns about environmental pollution
are leading people to think globally ,
she said.
People may move back to him one by
one, but they're moving.
Mr. Fuller was a self-taught architect, mathematician,
engineer, inventor, futurist and philosopher, best
remembered for the design of the geodesic dome.
He was called the first poet of technology,
coining words and phrases such as dymaxion and tensegrity
and inventing new tools to benefit spaceship
earth . Though a seminal thinker, he was also known
as a crackpot with a large cult following of hippies.
His most important rule was to do
more with less. and he left a wealth of ideas,
principles of universe and inventions
on the shelf when he did in 1983 at the age of 87.
The Fuller Dymaxion air-ocean projection, invented
in 1946, places the North pole at the center of a
map, lays out the continents to show their geological
closeness and eliminates political boundaries and
distortions of size and shape inherent in the familiar
Mercator projection. It essentially tips the world
on its ear.
The idea of linking the world's electricity grids
came from the playing of World Game, a logistics exercise
invented by Mr. Fuller in 1969, where players representing
the population stand on a huge Dymaxion map and deal
with food, resources, energy and war materials.
Mr. Fuller believed shortages affecting humanity
were not a problem of supply but distribution, and
called the energy network the highest
priority objective of the game.
Proponents say the ability to instantaneously send
power around the world into different time zones and
climates would mean an abundance of electricity where
it is needed. Ready availability of power would improve
living standards. Only generators that are the most
efficient and environmentally sound would be used
constantly, and renewable energy sources such as wind
and solar generation would be incorporated into the
network.
In the proposal, grids already present in most areas
would be linked by underwater cables across distances
such as the Bering Strait, an expensive proposition
but a fraction of the current cost of the military
buildup in the United States and Soviet Union.
GENI members insist the technology is not the stuff
of Buck Rogers. The strategy of wheeling
power from one area to another is already growing,
with places such as California and British Columbia
trading electricity. Power grids are expanding, even
highly nationalistic countries in the Middle East
forming electric links.
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Figure 1: The idea of linking the world's electricity
grids came from the playing of World Game, a logistics
exercise invented by R. Buckminster Fuller in 1969.
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Tipping the world on its ear
Technological advances over the past two decades
have made a global grid more practicable, with new
metallic alloys insulators and current converters
that allow ultra-high voltage (UHV)
transmission. Two decades ago, electricity could be
transmitted only about 350 miles Economically, hut
today it can travel more than 4,000 miles.
The idea of the global grid was taken off the shelf
five years ago by GENI director Peter Meisen, a San
Diego mechanical engineer. Affiliates have been established
in places such as Australia, Alaska and Singapore.
There has been no other engineering
proposal that has ever been as big, Mr. Meisen
said. The idea is to put it on the
global agenda.
The first step for GENI to propose an ambitious east-west
energy bridge between Alaska and Siberia —
the Bering Strait, something that would not only be
symbolically significant but would provide a day-night
link across the International Date line.
A mailing list informs several thousand GENI members
of the initiative, and they pass along information
and a video tape explaining the proposal to friends
and co-workers with an almost religious zeal.
Its an idea that's worth following
up — technologically and economically it is
feasible, said GENI Canada's Mr. Lyttle, who admits
that politicians and bureaucrats remain to he convinced,
If we create the parade, meaning the
grassroots, then a politician will jump in front.
However, while it was greeted with interest in 1969,
when it was first proposed, the resurgence of the
idea of a global grid has not so far been embraced
by environmentalists and energy researchers.
Even a human species-scale genius
like Buckminster Fuller had the right to have a bad
day. I think he had one when he thought of GENI.
said Norman Rubin, a spokesman for Energy Probe.
Groups such as Mr. Rubin's favor conservation, local
small-scale production or electricity such as cogeneration
projects that combine electricity generation and heating
in individual buildings, as well as an end to megaprojects
and long-distance transmission.
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Figure 2: Buckminster Fuller designed the Dymaxion
Map.
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Mr. Rubin said Mr. Fuller's premise that there is
a constant surplus of energy was wrong, The
idea of shipping it halfway around the world is ludicrous.
GENI supporters are aware of mounting concerns about
the health effects of electromagnetic emissions from
high-voltage lines, but they say studies about links
to cancer are inconclusive and society is already
irrevocably wired into electrical fields without GENI.
The proposal has some important people among its
supporters. At Mr. Fuller's request, former Canadian
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau reportedly brought up
the idea of energy network when he traveled to Moscow
in the l97Os to meet with Soviet leaders. It has also
been strongly endorsed by singer John Denver, who
was a close friend of Mr. Fuller and whose Colorado-based
Windstar Foundation was founded on his principles.
Medard Gabel, the executive-director of Philadelphia-based
World Game Projects Inc., said Buckyisms such as World
Game seem much more relevant now than 20 years ago.
The game is being played with increasing frequency;
there were 12 World Game presentations staged in the
United States in 1986 and more than 175 are expected
to be held this year.
There is definitely a perception
on the part of humanity, from corporations to world
leaders to world leaders to college professors and
students, that we are on a planet. No longer are we
just a part of the U.S. or Canada or wherever.
The Buckminster Fuller institute, which Is run by
Mr. Fuller's grandson, Jaime Snyder, has found a growing
demand for the inventor's works, especially with the
interest In events he helped organize, such as Earth
Day, and the teaching of his version of the world
map in many schools.
Now housed in a concrete building, the institute
hopes to construct a geodesic design science center
to display Mr. Fuller's works and archives, which
include everything from models of inventions such
as the fly's eye dome to original itineraries recording
his worldwide lecture tours,
Meanwhile, followers say they are not concerned that
Mr. Fuller's ideas are not readily implemented.
Michael Healey, a partner In Synergetic Solutions,
a Toronto-based company that teaches a workshop for
business people based on Mr. Fuller's works, said
the inventors design science evolution
predicted there would be a gestation period for each
of his inventions such as GENI. He
didn't feel the world was really for everything,
Mr. Healed said.
For example, Mr. Fuller predicts that the geodesic
dome, which he conceived in 1927, would have a gestation
of 50 years. By 1977 there were more than 200,000
such domes in the world, though they have not grown
much in numbers since and have not caught on where
he felt they would be most useful, as emergency housing.
William Perk, a lecturer at Southern Illinois University
where Mr. Fuller once taught, said the inventor believed
in emergence through emergency,
that his ideas would come to fruition when humanity
needed them.
The matter of timing is out of the
hands of the designer, he said.
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