energy – Prolumine

Confusion surrounds the ‘energy transition’. The emphasis on carbon is also bit of a red herring.

Carbon is emitted as a consequence of hydrocarbon combustion.

Technology grows economies and energy consumption

Hydrocarbons (coal, oil, gas) are the workhorse fuels of the industrial revolution. This means that there is a good correlation between carbon emissions and economic growth!

Economies as interconnected systems of nodes (people, companies, other organisations) and flows (of energy and materials and information). Such systems grow larger as they incorporate more energy, which becomes embodied in goods and assets and what is contained within the flows. Technologies are tools for accessing and storing more energy in the system. New technologies unlock new sources of energy and the means for storing them within the economic system. As economies grow, they consume more energy—because the consumption of energy is what allows the economy to grow. At any given time, an economy has a certain energy footprint. If new technologies expand this footprint, the economy can grow (resulting in a larger footprint). If technologies are forgotten or regulated away, the energy footprint declines, and the economy will shrink (a phenomenon that we call ‘recession’ or ‘depression’).

The rate of growth (or lack thereof) affects the sentiments and belief of people within an economy. When an economy is growing, many feel optimistic about the future and are happy to invest in new opportunities. Those responsible for innovation and investment are rewarded (a necessary evil), creating inequalities. When economies grow more slowly, if at all, it is harder for many to feel optimistic about the future.

Systems-level management becomes important during periods of declining or negative growth. People need to understand what is happening and where they fit in. It is much harder to manage a mature organisation than a growing one. The emphasis on a ‘metaphysic’, ‘mission’, or general organising force needs to strengthen, to keep people focussed on the task at hand. In a mature economy, the emphasis needs to be on efficiency (deciding what nodes and flows to prioritise and focussing on getting as much as possible out of the available energies), not growth.

Renewable economies are smaller and less sophisticated

Before the Industrial Revolution, human economies were powered by wholly renewable sources (sun, wind, and biomass). The Industrial Revolution unlocked new stores of fossil energies.

Apart from tidal, geothermal, and radioactive energies, all processes on Earth are powered by the sun. The sun is a giant, gravity-powered fusion reactor that releases large amounts of heat (infrared radiation) into space. The Earth is bathed in these energies. While most sunlight is radiated back into space, some sunlight is captured and drives the global weather cycle, which erodes geological formations. Other sunlight is captured by plants and other photosynthetic organisms that contain specialised arrays for capturing solar energies and the capacity for storing these as biomass.

Sunlight is a very diffuse energy source, but one that can be concentrated as it is transformed into other forms. Wind is more concentrated than sunlight and is considered to be of a higher quality and ‘transformity’. Rain also has a higher transformity than sunlight (being formed as oceans absorb solar energies and some water molecules evaporate, carrying the solar energy to where the wind blows and where the rain falls). When rain falls over an area, the evaporated water becomes successively more concentrated and can be used to power hydropower plants. Hydropower is therefore of a higher transformity still. This makes waterpower a higher-quality source of energy than either wind or solar, but it is often geographically localised and has other environmental impacts (damming).

Biomass has a high transformity (representing sunlight captured and concentrated and maintained over long periods). Organisms are the most efficient captors of solar energies, and biomass is the most efficient store. Solar panels (even with batteries or other storage) don’t get even close!

Fossil fuels are derived from concentrated biomass and have very high transformities. Burning even small amounts of fossil fuels releases the energy equivalent of thousands of years of biomass accumulation in a short span of time. That’s what makes fossil fuels so valuable: We can have thousands of years’ worth of pre-Industrial energies released in an instant! (No wonder that industrialised economies are capable of reaching sizes orders-of-magnitude larger than pre-industrial ones.)

Following the Industrial Revolution, human economies have been growing at very high rates—and faster the more technologies (begot from previous technologies) that have been developed to capture and store more energies. This—and plentiful fossil resources—have allowed human economies to grow exponentially. The past 200 years have therefore been quite an exceptional time in human history. Without fossil fuels, economies would not have been able to grow this fast (or this large).

A forced ‘maturity’ in the transition away from fossil fuels

Carbon emissions go hand in hand with the burning of fossil fuels. This is carbon that was captured from the atmosphere by organisms that were alive at one point, converted into biomass, and then stored and concentrated deep underground for millions of years. Releasing large amounts of this stored carbon at once (or over a geologically brief period of 200 years) has impacted the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Much of the released carbon dioxide has been buffered by the world’s oceans, but at the expense of acidification. The concern about climate change comes from the recognition that once the ocean buffers are full, the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide can rise quickly enough to push the global climate into a completely new state. We don’t know what that state might look like, but there is analogy here to how the processes that contribute to the biology of ageing over-fill cellular calcium stores. (It’s probably best not to find out what an ‘ageing’ climate would look like.)

So, we’re transitioning away from fossil fuels. This transition has philosophically been happening since the first carbon-dioxide recordings were made and people realised that they have been rising concurrent with the unfolding of the Industrial Revolution. But social and cultural change takes time to go from seed to execution. Thermodynamically, it also makes sense for energy to be used: The ‘invisible hand’ of the universe obeys the second law of thermodynamics (that the not-available energy content of the universal system should always increase). Any local increase in the organisation of matter (organisms and things) needs to be paid for with an increase in the not-available energy content of the universe.

The best way to make energy ‘not available’ is to consume the available energies—to build or do something and, in so doing, convert the available energy into not-available energy. It only makes sense (unless you have great self-control!) to phase out a rich source of energy once it is no longer energy-effective to procure it. Only at this point, where you have to put more energy into procuring energy than the amount of energy you get out, does it make sense to change your energy-seeking behaviour to do something more efficient and worthwhile. There are obvious analogies to this in investing (but using an ‘energy currency’ instead of money).

‘Zero-carbon’ fuels are distractions, not enablers

So far, the ‘energy transition’ has not been as much a transition away from fossil fuels and onto renewables as it has been a way to continue growing our economies—but faster. Instead of taking over from the fossil fuels, renewables have formed additions to our total energy consumption. So, the transition hasn’t been as much of a transition as it has been an addition to our total energy-generating capacity. For a true energy transition to take place, we need to shift our energy usage away from fossil fuels and onto renewables. But that means an end to growth: We will have a (lot) fewer energies to power everything that we’d like to do.

The current allure of ‘zero-carbon fuels’ like hydrogen and compressed air storage and batteries is that they will help us manage the supply-demand mismatch between renewable solar energies and human energy use. Excepting nuclear power (which yields a net-energy return on investment at the expense of a nuclear-waste problem) and the not-quite-here-yet fusion power (which so far has not yielded a net-energy return on investment), other renewable sources of energy are intermittent—and unpredictable.

The intermittency of renewables forms the basis for much of the debate around renewables and inspires much innovation in the sector. To manage the intermittency, the temptation is to ‘smooth’ the energy supply by managing it in time and space. Batteries and compressed air and hydrogen and other storage technologies are offered up as solutions to this problem. Such ‘zero-carbon fuels’ can be generated when renewables are plentiful and then stored and transported to be used where and when the energy is needed.

However, these stores—and therefore the transition itself—cannot be used to generate much economic growth: As we phase out fossil fuels, we need to convert some of these fuels into the generation and distribution infrastructure needed for the energy transition to occur: We need to spend our energy on energy-generation, not downstream production. For the first time, we might find ourselves running at full speed as an economy—just to stay where we are. This could mark the end of the Industrial Revolution as we know it. As the previous era begins cresting, a new era might begin.

The real energy transition marks the end of growth

While it is alluring to think that we can continue on with business as normal while transitioning our economies away from fossil energies and onto renewables, this feels unlikely. Just as large social and cultural and economic and infrastructural changes were required to make full use of the promise and potential of the Industrial Revolution, we will need to make as-large changes to make full use of the potential of a return to renewables. Many things are going to change. Many things are going to need to change.

Among the things to change is likely to be our on-demand economy. Likely, our economies are going to need to shift to become more supply-driven; going from being ‘on demand’ to being to be ‘on supply’. Many trends that we take for granted might actually start to run in reverse! Instead of growth being the sine qua non of modern human activity, efficiency is likely to start becoming more important: Instead of maximising toplines, we might want to maximise turnover. An emphasis on quality over quantity is likely to result. Experience and expertise is likely to be valued higher than ambition and energy. Instead of money and power being symbols of success, we might start to value wisdom and insight. It’s almost as if our economies and societies through these changes are starting to become more … mature.

A mature economy will look very different from the young economy that we’re used to! We should certainly not expect it to look like an extrapolation of the status quo. In fact, we might be heading more towards the Star Trek universe (where high-tech meets low-density sustenance farming) rather than the overpopulated, financialised, hi-tech solar system depicted in, for example, S.A. Corey’s The Expanse (available on Amazon Prime). Rather than looking forward (by extrapolating current trends), we might instead want to look into the past for inspiration.

Sustainability is dead, long live sustainability

Likely, the last years of the pre-Industrial age likely represented ‘peak sustainability’.

Before fossil fuels started to be used at scale, human economies were completely solar-powered (excepting tidal and geothermal energies). People back then were just as smart and innovative as we are today, they just had fewer fossil fuels and less information about how to use these fuels available. But that didn’t stop them from building massive windmills out of sustainable materials like stone and wood, or from figuring out how to maximise the productivity of solar-powered and carbon-storing farm and woodlands. They were practising true sustainability (as in, building something that lasts), living within their means—and within a truly circular economy.

In such economies, low-tech options are better (and more efficient) than high-tech options. For example, instead of treating urban wastewater in chemical and energy-intensive water-treatment plants, wastewater can be funnelled into wetlands to grow algae to feed fish to feed the people who produced the original waste. This way, material and nutrients are kept cycling and the only energy that is needed is that supplied by the sun. No fossil fuels or technology is needed! Similarly, instead of having our goods made in far-away countries and then imported, we can make goods more locally. In those cases where goods need to be imported, we can use wind-powered ships, like the great clippers of the late 19th century before they were phased out by steam-powered ships.

Instead of our economies and societies growing larger and more interconnected and increasingly frenetic, a true energy transition might allow the world to shrink and to slow down. Communities will become smaller and more tightly-knit: We’ll get to spend more time with our children and to get to know our neighbours again. There will also be less need for computing and software in a world where everything is moving slowly enough to be done by hand (or reached by foot). With some modern technology and more moderate expectations of what makes a good life, we might finally end up with the long-promised 4-day workweek—if ‘work’ in its modern sense even exists at all.

Demands in this slower, smaller economy will be driven by efficiency (not growth). The path there will be one of transition (just as the way to now from the start of the Industrial Revolution was, in turn). During this centuries-long process, populations will shrink and more people will move into the countryside where the energy (sunlight and biomass) is more highly concentrated. As these changes are happening, we will be tasked with sifting through our current library of technologies and energy uses and figuring out what will be worth keeping and what should be forgotten. It will be the ‘destructive’ part of Schumpeter’s ‘creative destruction’. But ‘destruction’ is a misnomer. It’s a constructive and evaluative process. The economic equivalent of natural selection. What is good for the economy and the community and individuals will survive and to be selected for. The ‘invisible hand’ of this process will be happiness and well-being, not the accumulation of wealth.

Fossil fuels were an investment, but was is a good one?

On the way to our current (or near) economic peak we have used abundant fuels and our collective imagination to create knowledge and technologies and things. Some of this investment has been worthwhile and has made the world a better place. (Some investment, maybe less so!)

On the way down (the descent), we will need to figure out what is a good investment for the long term, and what we should write off as a collective, youthful mistake. The most energy-intensive tools and applications will likely be the first to go… At the same time, new technologies will be invented, but with an emphasis on efficiency and sustainability—rather than growth and desirability.

While these trends are already in motion (observe, for example, the current interest in building out the urban bike infrastructure and the growing demand for locally-made goods), the bulk of these changes will happen over a long period of time. The world did not industrialise overnight—and it will likely take a similar time to de-industrialise. Continents like Africa, which are less-far along their industrialisation trajectory might (finally) be allowed to develop in their own way, without industrialised-world oversight.

Companies will also come and go in this span of time. Hopefully—the occasional conflict and energy crisis aside—the transition will also be well-managed and peaceful. Like with most social trends, we will (ideally) only notice these things happening only when we look backwards and notice how much society has changed while we were busy worrying about something else. : )

Prolumine

Tag: energy

Maturity and efficiency: Progress in a post-growth world