by Jen Stevenson Zepeda
Climable is in the business of technical translation. Our mission is to make clean energy and climate science understandable for everyone. Why? Because if people understand the issues they are empowered to take action based on their new-found knowledge!
Not actual footage of Jen, but it might as well be. Image: Pexels.com
Navigating the energy world, however, takes some FORTITUDE! Take the electricity system, for example. It is super complicated (it’s also antiquated, but that, my friends, is a topic for another day); there are the power plants, the transmission & distribution system, the system operator, the utility, and a slew of other parties involved (like you, the “ratepayer”) that can make it all oh-so-overwhelming.
On top of all of this, there are the acronyms. Holy cannoli there are way too many acronyms (we are lumping acronyms in with initialism for brevity, but a quick online search will reveal their nuanced difference!). Their pervasive use can deter even the most determined of people from trying to figure things out. Take DR. In some circles it means ‘demand response,’ the process of reducing or shifting electric load for balancing supply on the grid. But it has also been used as ‘distributed resources’ aka DERs or ‘distributed energy resources.’ DR/DERs are small sources of energy like solar panels or combined heat and power (CHP) plants or batteries that connect to the distribution system. They usually aren’t as big as a power plant, but are bigger than a bread box.
What is the point of venting about all this alphabet soup? For starters, venting can be therapeutic. But more importantly, it’s to highlight how using this type of lingo is effectively elitist, exclusionary gatekeeping. Climable believes people should be involved in energy discussions. Enough of the suits behind closed doors making decisions about our energy futures! Anyone should have a seat at that energy table and they shouldn’t be made to feel inferior by having to ask what something stands for. Acronyms serve as a hurdle to that more inclusive participation. Plus, using them usually slows down the conversation. If the purpose of acronyms is to speed things up, when you have to stop the flow of conversation to ask what something stands for it has the opposite effect. If you’re reading and you have to keep flipping back a few pages to remind yourself what something stands for (or, in my experience, you end up having to write down a makeshift glossary) it prevents you from getting to the core of the material quickly.
Whenever possible, we at Climable avoid the use of superfluous abbreviations, because it’s just as easy to say Renewable Energy Credits as it is to offhandedly reference RECs and expect everyone to be on the same page. We’d encourage other organizations in any field to consider toning the acronyms down so we can start to level the playing field and invite more people into our conversations. Give it a try, k? LOL, IDK, TTYL!
P.S. Been burned by acronyms before? Commiserate with us by leaving your story in the comments!