We have to make our energy resources renewable. But How?
Lets have a glimpse of the future and the steps humanity has to take in order to tackle the menace of climate change.
All of us are aware of the fact that the climate is changing. It is causing unprecedented catastrophes all around the world. Be it the ravaging heat waves of California or the shrinking icebergs in the Scandinavian regions.
We have realised the need of transitioning towards an economy that is both environmentally sustainable(by reducing emissions) and can undo the historical exploitation (by sequestering carbon) of natural resources.
From a shift towards electrical vehicles to the technological advancement in areas of renewable energy all of it has made us realise the importance of collaboration to achieve a sustainable future.
Along with the hope of achieving the goals of a sustainable life, there are many issues hanging right above us. Some of which are inherent in the systems we have created and some are driven by the greed of powerful people.
Systemic issues of the Economy
The systemic issues include the over dependency on fossil fuels for our energy needs and the inability of some areas of the economy(cement, steel, etc) to sustain without non-renewable sources.
Companies are sprouting to make these areas sustainable but they still are far from supplying for the demand.
Bill Gates in his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, identifies the gap of ‘Green premium’, which is the investment required to develop green technologies.
Once we are able to reduce green premium to zero, the renewable tech can compete with the non renewable.
Governments all around the world are promoting matured renewable technologies like solar panels, electric vehicles, and carbon capture using regulations(including Renewable energy certificates or Carbon tax).
But new technologies in these areas require investment in the R&D by private players who have no incentive to shift towards a greener economy.
Once we are able to shift these areas(cement, steel, etc) towards renewable ways, the technology can be shared with developing countries to reduce emissions on a large scale.
The greed of people in power
Due to the risks associated with the investments in Green technologies, private players prefer investing in unsustainable resources(coal, fossil fuels) due to the surety of profits from these areas.
Although, these people cannot be blamed completely for their actions as the economy needs energy to sustain and grow but its the capitalistic mindset to generate profits that is causing the problem.
“Which is why we need boot strapping and ventures capital to fund innovation in green tech”, says Bill Gates.
Once there is a breakthrough in green tech, economies of scale can be used to fill the gap of supply and demand, like we did in solar and wind technologies.
A historical dependency
We have been using fossil fuels in one form or the other for quite some time now but it got a significant boost during the first Industrial Revolution of 1760s. Which makes our dependency a lot harden to undo.
Unlike fossil fuels with significant technological advancement in its production, the production of renewable energy has seen limited technological growth even though the negative effects of fossil fuels were raised by the scientific community back in 1883 itself.
There are multiple sources for this transition towards a renewable future. Lets explore each one of them in detail in order to understand where we are right now and the steps we need to take in order to reach sustainability.
Solar Energy
Solar, which is a continuous source of supply during sunny days requires efficient photovoltaic cells(PV cells) to capture Solar energy. The cost of PV cells has gone down significantly since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008, reducing almost to 1/7th of the initial cost.
But the extraction of silicon and aluminium required for solar cells is an energy intensive process . There are companies like Geo40 working to extract silica more efficiently using geothermal energy while others are working to make green aluminium which is already competing with traditional aluminium.
Wind Energy
Along with Solar, Wind Energy has also seen growth to maintain a consistent supply of energy along with solar.
The huge setup cost and the demand for large areas of land are the hurdles when it comes to wind power. Along with the hazard to wildlife, wind energy is also mired with inconsistency similar to solar.
Considering these problems, wind energy plants are being setup in an off shore setting to spare land for other essential activities.
Nuclear Energy
Nuclear is regarded most suitable when it comes to generating renewable energy. But our experience of disasters including Chernobyl(1986) or Fukushima(2011) and the issue of nuclear waste are the major concerns due to which Nuclear is in a bad light.
Also the peaceful use of nuclear can easily be diverted to military use as we have seen in cases of Iran and North Korea.
Due to these concerns Nuclear is taking a back seat in some of the major economies of the world including the US and Germany.
Germany is subsequently shutting down all of its Nuclear plants by 2022 and shifting towards other renewable sources of energy. Which might get delayed due to the disruptions of LNG from Russia.
But the Nuclear story is way too complicated than just some radioactive waste or the possibilities of Nuclear weapons.
We still don’t have a plan for how we are going to deal with all the heavy-metal waste generated from solar panels.
Some of them are Cadmium, Chromium, and lead that even more radioactive than the radiations out of Chernobyl!
The amount of energy produced by Nuclear is multiples of what solar and wind can together generate with way less emissions and waste.
China for one is using Totamak technology to develop Nuclear fusion devices. There is another project named ITER(International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) which is a collaboration of 35 nations including India and USA.
Have a look at this ted talk by Michael Shellenberger for a better understanding of Nuclear.
Lessons from past experiences
The one lesson we have been able to get from the experience of unregulated emissions or excessive dependency on Plastic is, that we don’t have an option to follow the lifestyle of make-use-discard.
We need to design our products and energy sources in such a way that we can utilise the waste sustainably. That’s the basic idea of a Circular Economy.
According to the UN Emissions Gap report, if we reduce our emissions by 7% every year, which is what happened in 2020 due to the Pandemic induced lock-downs, we still see the world going towards a three degree rise by the end of the century.
That’s double the 1.5 degree centigrade target of Paris Agreement of 2015.
Such an emission reduction is not going to happen unless we become aware of how we use the resources available to us.
The dimensions of production, transmission, usage, and storage need scientific studies for us to make a sustainable future for the up coming generations.
We are all in this together
What we need to understand is that the effects of climate change won’t hit us with different intensity but will rather have severe or extremely severe effects on all of us at the same time.
The rising sea levels will sink all the continents and the forest fires will spread without borders.
Nature has no plans to understand the rules we have created for the functioning of our society. We have to align with how nature works and design our systems for a sustainable economy.
No matter how many technologies the western world or the super powers develop, they must share it with other states around the world keeping the profits aside.
That’s the only way to develop a truly sustainable future.
Follow for more such eye opening topics. Let me know your views on how we can move to a world that corroborates with nature.
