William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review
Abstract
Relying on only renewable resources for generating electricity once seemed like a dream. Yet, an island in Denmark is now achieving that dream by generating all the electricity it needs with renewable resources. Other communities throughout the world now want to achieve this same milestone. To critics, these goals are not attainable due to the intermittent nature of the primary renewable resources, wind and solar power, which many of these communities plan to rely on. But, several studies have confirmed that it can be done, and plans are already underway to switch communities to one hundred percent renewable energy in just a few years. This dream of relying only on renewables can also be realized in the near future in communities in the United States by integrating energy efficiency, demand response, distributed generation and energy storage into an integrated green urban grid. This Article presents a vision for a new integrated green urban grid that could reliably supply a community with all of its net energy needs.