Solar power gets real

Some of the long parabolic reflectors in the Shams 1 electric power plant in Abu Dhabi.I love to see this kind of machinery made real. Image from the Shams Image Gallery

I love seeing pictures of real solar electricity generating plant. In a sunny country where peak sun coincides with peak electricity demand – for air conditioning – this makes complete sense. I can’t speak for the finances, but in terms of EROEI, this looks a sensible energy investment.

The BBC recently showed footage of the SHAMS 1 plant in Abu Dhabi. The enterprise also has a web page and wikipedia entry.

There are loads of ways to generate electricity with solar energy. I don’t know that one technology can yet be said to make better sense than any other – but this plant looks relatively low tech and relatively expandable. This must be like in the early days of steam engines or powered flight where people struggled to find optimal engineering solutions.

This plant in fact appears to be a solar-assisted gas-fired steam turbine, where the solar heating is used to reduce the gas consumption, but where gas can be burned as back-up at night or on cloudy days.

There was a mention of the ability to store the solar heat for short periods and so spread the generating time, but it didn’t sound as though this had been implemented.

Why am I mentioning this? Because lots of places in the world are sunny – and many of these places have lots of space. This is unlikely to be a good technology for use in the UK, but for countries near the Equator such a plant must look attractive – exploiting a natural and inexhaustible resource and delivering valuable electricity.

It looks to me like a glimpse into the future. A sustainable future.

New Nuclear?

Tony Blair (remember him?) with the Sellafield reprocessing plant in the background. Basically there has been no progress on the of building of new nuclear plants since 2004. (Image from The Guardian)

When I began Protons for Breakfast back in September 2004, one of the big questions we looked at was whether the UK would actually get around to commissioning new nuclear power stations. In that first presentation I quoted an article from the Daily Telegraph (11th July 2004)

“…even if the next administration decides in 2006 to build new nuclear stations, the planning and construction process means that new plants could not come on line until 2015 at the earliest.“

I also quoted the then prime minister, Tony Blair.

“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly…”*

As we end the 17th presentation of the course in April 2013, we are still asking exactly the same question. If we had made a decision back in 2006, then we would now be just a year or two away from switching on perhaps 3 GW low-carbon electricity generation.

Back then it seemed as though the British Government would make the choice. Now it seems the choice lies with a company (EDF) owned by the French government, who will assess our offer of subsidy to see if it suits them. However did we get here?

The reason has to do with the uniquely capital-intensive nature of nuclear power and the essentially uninsurable nature of its risks.

We can build up wind farms, one rotor at a time with each rotor costing only a few million. Private capital can do this. We can build up solar power in the same way.

Conventional coal and gas power plants costing on the order of 1 billion pounds and with a well-understood lifetime cost can just about be built by private capital.

But putting up on the order of 10 billion pounds for which there will be no return on investment for a clear decade at best, requires a rock solid guarantee of a return on investment which only governments can provide. At the moment it looks like the subsidy for the first station might guarantee a price as high as £0.10p per kWh for the next 20 or 30 years.

EDF are perfectly reasonable in asking for this subsidy. Our weak position as a country is because of decades of under investment in the massive costs of generating and distributing electricity. There is no reason to think that ‘market forces’ will drive the level of investment required – only governments can do this.

Now you may think that we shouldn’t build any new nuclear power stations. This is a fair point, and we could discuss it at leisure. However, it really does feel like a matter of national shame that we can’t even make up our minds one way or the other and just get on with it.

* Actually Macbeth Act 1 Scene 7

Ahhh EROEI

The Ratio of the Energy Returned divided by the Energy Invested in producing electricity. The Green bars are global estimates and the purple bars apply to the US. There is considerable uncertainty in all the numbers.

How should we decide on the mix of technologies to use to generate electricity? There are pros and cons for all the choices.

• Coal is cheap but emits carbon dioxide.
• Gas is a bit more expensive but emits 50%  less carbon dioxide.
• Nuclear requires eye-watering up-front investment but is low carbon.
• Wind energy is intermittent but sustainable

So it is interesting to make quantitative comparisons between the differing technologies. We have many choices in comparing parameters. Initial costs; running costs;  immunity to world fuel prices; sustainability - the list goes on.

One interesting choice is EROEI: the Energy Return on Energy Invested. It is the answer to the sum:

EROEI = Useful energy produced ÷ Energy invested

So for example, if I use one unit of energy to dig coal from the ground, ship it around the world,  and then burn it to power a steam turbine and make electricity, how many units of electrical energy do I generate?

This is a simple question to ask, but a difficult one to answer. For example, one would obviously consider the energy used in shipping the coal. But what about the energy used in building the ship? Or some fraction of it? Using standardised rules one can produce estimates of EROEI and the results – in a chart at the top of the article are interesting.

Several things struck me about this chart

• First there is massive discrepancy between world-wide coal (18) and US coal (80). This is presumably because of the ease of extraction of US coal, and the short distance from mines to coal-powered  electricity-generating plant. The large numbers in each case help explain the popularity of coal in generating electricity both world-wide and in the US. The energy return of course takes no account for energy which might be needed to cope with the consequences of the massive carbon dioxide emissions, or the appalling environmental legacy of coal mines.
• Second is the number for wind (20 or 18) – which is more-or less the same as coal. At Protons for Breakfast many people ask whether in energy terms wind power is ‘worth it’. The answer from these studies is a definite ‘Yes’. However I suspect that the time to reap this return on investment may be longer which affects the financial return on investment.
• On reflection I was not surprised that hydroelectricity represents the best EROEI, but of course this does not cover the environmental costs of such schemes.
• The low value for gas (7 or 10) surprised me. I suppose this reflects the costs of discovery, transport, storage and delivery.
• And finally the numbers for solar energy more or less match the numbers for nuclear energy. These are not specific to the UK and so the same numbers are unlikely to hold here. However I was surprised at the low number for nuclear power and the relatively high value of Solar Photovoltaic generation.

EROEI is not a magic number – but it is a fundamental number. If this number is below unity, then in energy terms the activity makes no sense. And if the number is close to unity, then the activity is barely worthwhile unless there is some other benefit. Scientific American suggest that activities where the EROEI is below 5 represent a borderline below which electricity -generating technologies are no longer worthwhile. It is interesting that several current technologies – including nuclear power –  come close to that suggested border.

References

Mason Inman: Scientific American 2013: This contains lots of links to his sources – but many of these are behind pay walls

Wikipedia EROEI  This contains lots of links to sources – but many of these are behind pay walls as well

Watching pots boil

My previous article about kettles left me wondering: Can gas hobs really waste more than half of the calorific energy in the gas? I decided to try a few more experiments and finally I think I have an answer: ‘Yes’. Gas hobs really do fail to transfer a great deal of the calorific energy in the gas to the pan or kettle they are heating.

Experiment#1: Heating different amounts of water in the same pan

Experiment#1 Rather than measuring the total time to reach 100 °C, I measured the rate of temperature rise. Because the heat capacity of water is well known, this allowed me to estimate how much thermal power was entering the water. So I spent a happy hour or so heating up various amounts of water: first 200g, then 400 g, 600g and finally 800g and I measured the temperature every 20 seconds.

The temperature rise versus time of four different amounts of water on a 1.75 kW burner.

I knew the burner power was 1.75 kW, and after a little jiggery pokery with a spreadsheet I estimated the power entering the water as a function of temperature rise.

The estimated amount of thermal power entering the water for water on a 1.75 kW burner.

The data is a little noisy but it shows that initially only about 850 W of the burner power reaches the water. Since this is 1750 W (nominal) burner, this raises the question of where the remaining 900 W of power is going! It is also interesting that rate of heat input to the water decreases with temperature rise such that the rate of heat input at the boiling temperature (roughly 80 °C temperature rise) is barely more than half the initial rate of heat input. I have calculated the radiated heat from the upper surfaces of the kettle and it cannot account for this.

Experiment#2: Heating the same amount of water in the four different size pans.

Experiment #2 Now I fixed the amount of water (0.5 kg) but I used four different pans: a baby pan (0.487 kg: diameter 15 cm); a mother pan (0.601 kg: diameter 17 cm); a daddy pan (0.834 kg: diameter 19 cm) and a big daddy pan (1.8 kg: diameter 24.5 cm). I measured the water temperature at the start, heated for 60 seconds and measured the temperature again, and then heated for another 60 seconds. The results are shown in the chart below.

The temperature rise after 60 seconds and 120 seconds of 500 g water heated in four different size pans.

The main observation is that the water heats significantly faster in the largest pan. After 60 seconds the temperature of the water in the small pan had risen 20 °C whereas the water in the largest pan was 5 °C hotter – despite the extra 0.347 kg of steel that needed heating. This is consistent with the idea that a great deal of the heat energy is lost because the hot gas from the combustion does not remain in contact with the base long enough to transfer its heat. On small pans, hot gases escape around the edge of the pan.

Estimated efficiency of heat transfer to a pan versus the area of the base of the pan.

I estimated the heat capacity of the pans and then calculated the fraction of the energy of the gas that the [pan + water] combination had captured. The data show a linear dependence on area with the largest pan capturing a plausible 83% of the calorific energy of the fuel.

Two images of a kettle on a hob taken using infra red light. The image on the left shows the general situation of the kettle – notice the hot handle! The thermograph on the right shows details of the base with an estimated temperature of approximately 224 C.

Experiment #3 It occurred to me that the underside of the kettle (or pans) might become extremely hot and radiate a significant amount of energy. However borrowing a thermal camera from work, the hottest features I could see were only just over 200 °C. Even accounting for the considerable uncertainties in this estimate, the radiated energy from the base of the kettle is only a few tens of watts at most, and can’t account for the energy losses of hundreds of watts that I have observed. A picture of the kettle on the hob shows the strong heating of the base of the cooker and the handle – which was indeed too hot to hold.

Summary

So now a general picture emerges: although cooking with gas uses a primary fuel, typically half of that energy is lost on the hob. Using a large pan on a small flame, I managed to capture as much as 83% of the primary energy, but for a kettle, 50% is probably more typical. Using a large flame on a small kettle will easily waste more than 50% of the energy.

And I can now answer my initial question: Should I use an electric kettle (in which 60% of the primary energy is discarded at the power station, but which is essentially 100% efficient in my kitchen) or a gas kettle (in which nearly all the energy of the primary fuel is delivered but which is only rough 50% efficient in my kitchen)? My answer is that it makes very little difference. It is best to use whichever device allows you to easily boil the correct amount of water – and not to boil water which is then unused.

Which kettle to choose: Gas or Electric?

Which kettle is more energy efficient?

Boiling water is an essential pre-requisite for the preparation of tea – and as such it is an activity central to the cultural life in England. For example, six cups of tea were drunk while preparing this article. Boiling water is also an energy intensive activity and so for all the usual reasons, it’s a good idea to boil water in an efficient manner. But should one use an electric kettle or a gas kettle? This was the subject of my first ever blog posting back on 1st January 2008 – and because that blog is no longer available, I thought it worthwhile to re-post and re-visit the problem now.

Initially, I was confident that using a gas kettle would save energy compared with an electric kettle. This is because electricity is generated at power stations which have an overall efficiency which is often less than 40%. That’s a guideline figure for any thermally-generated electricity (coal, gas or nuclear). It means that roughly 60% of the energy content of the fuel is lost before the electricity leaves the power station. Some gas generation using CCGT technology is more efficient: up to 60% in the best cases but relatively little electricity is generated this way. Additionally, typically 10% of the energy which leaves the power station is lost in transmission to my home. So only perhaps 36% of the original energy content of the fuel is fed into my kettle element.

Since raw methane is distributed directly to my kitchen, all a gas kettle has to do is capture a bit more than one third of the chemical energy and I would be better off than using electricity. So I was confident that by using a gas kettle I would be making an environmentally friendly decision.

Was I right? I compared the time boil 1 litre of water with the time expected if the device used the energy supplied to it in the kitchen with 100% efficiency. I then applied a ‘Network Efficiency’ factor.

The Electric Kettle (2 kW) took 210 seconds to boil 1 litre compared with an expected time of 188 seconds, so the ‘in-kitchen’ efficiency was 90%.

The Gas kettle had three burners:

• The 1 kW Burner took 680 seconds to boil 1 litre compared with an expected time of 380 seconds, so the ‘in-kitchen’ efficiency was 56%.
• The 1.75 kW Burner took 450 seconds to boil 1 litre compared with an expected time of 210 seconds, so the ‘in-kitchen’ efficiency was 48%.
• The 3 kW Burner took 380 seconds to boil 1 litre compared with an expected time of 127 seconds, so the ‘in-kitchen’ efficiency was 33%.

The Microwave Oven (800 W) took 720 seconds to boil 1 litre compared with an expected time of 300 seconds, so the ‘in-kitchen’ efficiency was 66%.

And the results? 

Result #1 Heating water using a gas kettle is a more efficient use of fuel, but only at low gas settings. And even at low settings, a gas kettle wastes 50% of the energy supplied to it. Using higher gas settings wastes an even larger fraction, up to 67%!

Result #2 Heating water using an electric kettle is the fastest way to heat water, being roughly twice as fast as the high-power gas burner – and with very similar efficiency.

Result #3 Using a microwave to heat water was definitely the least efficient of any of the methods – but this result may change when heating small quantities of water.

Overall the data indicate that gas kettles are amazingly wasteful. In subsequent articles I will be looking to see if they really are as bad as they seem.

The efficiency of different ways of heating water. The blue dots show the efficiency with which fuel supplied to the kitchen is converted to heat energy in the water. The red dots show the efficiency when taking account of the conversion of chemical energy from the primary fuels. The shocking news is that even when boiling water slowly with gas, around half of the energy is wasted! If one is boiling the water quickly then there is no difference in overall efficiency between using gas or electricity – they both waste two thirds of the energy!

Experimental Details

• I began by measuring the initial temperature of water from the tap which turned out to be close to 10 Celsius.
• I then weighed the vessel (electric kettle, gas kettle or glass jug ) before and after filling with water.
• I estimated the energy required to raise water from 10 °C to 100 °C using the measured water mass and the heat capacity of water (roughly 4200 J per °C per kg and rather constant in this temperature range).
• For the electric kettle I used its power rating of 2000 W (which I had previously measured and found to be a good estimate.)
• For the gas I used data for the gas burners which indicated they had a rated power of 1 kW, 1.75 kW and 3 kW.
• For the microwave (rated power 800 W) I used a power meter to record the actual consumed power (1240 W)
• I then recorded the time taken for the water to reach 100 °C and compared with the expected time if the device were 100% efficient.

I then factored in the efficiency of the network, assuming that

• For electrical heating: 36% or the original calorific energy of the fuel was delivered to the house.
• For gas: 90% of the original calorific energy of the fuel was delivered to the house, with the remainder being used to power the pumps on the gas pipeline.

Finally on rewriting this in December 2012 I decided to re-check my numbers. I boiled the same kettle on the 1.75 kW burner and got an ‘in-kitchen’ efficiency of 41% compared with 43% that I estimated previously. So I estimate that these numbers have an uncertainty of around 1% or so.

Cultural Vertigo

London at night from the air. The roads look the veins and arteries of a living being.

ver·ti·go (Noun): A sensation of whirling and loss of balance, associated particularly with looking down from a great height, or caused by disease…

I have known for some time that I suffer from two forms of vertigo. The first is the normal form, induced by looking down over the edges of cliffs or tall buildings: I have to believe that this perfectly normal.

The second is age vertigo which involves similar dizziness, nausea and panic, but is induced by meeting adults who are much younger than me. My head spins as I focus on the vastness of the gap separating me from them – a gap across which we can converse, but not traverse. I cannot travel back to meet them, and by the time they reach my place on the cliff-face of life, I will have moved on. Or fallen off.  To the best of my knowledge I am the originator of this description of this sensation which must be surely be commonplace amongst those who are 52-ish.

Last night, as I flew back from a work visit to the European Space Agency in the Netherlands, I was visited by a third incarnation of vertigo – cultural vertigo.

The night was clear and I could see lights in towns from Holland to Belgium. On arriving above London the plane circled over the eastern edge of the M25. The view was astonishing: the roads resembled the arteries and veins of a living being – a being of unimaginable size and with an unimaginable appetite.

My sense of dizziness at the grandness and precariousness of our city was added to by the fact that I was observing this from a plane – and there was a queue of half a dozen similar observatories visible in the air behind us.

In addition to my flight, almost everything I could see below me involved burning carbon: for heating on this chilly night: for electricity to keep the lights on: and for fuel for the cars and lorries. The vastness of the city and the intensity and voracity of its need to burn carbon induced dizziness and panic. Will we ever give up our dependence on carbon? I realised I needed to add ‘despair’ to the list of characteristic symptoms of cultural vertigo.

My only relief came from remembering that we had just flown over the London Array - an offshore wind farm – visible as a regular array of red lights against the blackness of the North Sea. Surely if our culture could create and sustain this vast city – and yet realise it needed to change and create offshore wind farms – then surely we can change our ways.

In the same way that nobody envisaged London growing as large and as energy intensive as it has grown – surely we could imagine a world in which our renewable energy infrastructure grew until it met our needs. Surely we could imagine that?

Energy Prices: Reality Bites

Dilbert explains how a confusopoly works.

Worldwide, governments are ‘in denial’ about the inevitability of higher energy prices. At least in public. Somehow – despite some intelligent policies – it has become impossible for politicians to speak honestly and with a longer term perspective.

• The supply of energy is critical to a nation’s security and this is a responsibility which governments cannot abdicate.
• But neither can governments wave a wand and make market forces disappear.
• Climate change is a reality and – eventually – governments will have to respond no matter how unpopular this is.

In the UK David Cameron promised to insist that companies sell energy at the cheapest price to their customers. It seems like a simple enough promise, but I have great faith the confusopoly will survive. Why?

Well firstly, neither governments nor customers are in any position to argue. The government sold national energy assets decades ago and cannot afford to buy them back. And the UK does not possess a great excess of energy supply capacity over energy demand. So one way or another, the customers will have to pay. We are in a tight corner.

Secondly, the UK government committed itself reducing carbon emissions to 20% of its previous level by 2050. To achieve this it offers subsidies to producers of renewable electricity and to homeowners who insulate their homes. These subsidies are paid for by increasing the price of electricity. I think this is intelligent, but many do not.

In the USA I was astonished to see presidential candidates trading statistics about which of them would increase coal mining and gas extraction faster and so lower prices. The US elections are essentially a popularity contest and so it is not really surprising to see such exchanges. But in reality electricity generation from coal is an environmentally disastrous technology and – in part driven by rulings from the Environmental Protection Legislation – it is already being replaced in the US by gas – which in the US is probably (borderline) a good thing.

In France – Mr Hollande is introducing a system in which he seeks to hold back market forces and to make the price of electricity depend upon who you are and where you live. This is an extension of the US system I described a few months ago in which electricity becomes more expensive the more you use – a market-based system which discourages excess use. The problem with the French system is that – like the common agricultural policy – it is massively bureaucratic and encourages people to extract the maximum subsidy rather than to reduce use.

In my opinion - and this is why I have never been a popular person – we should welcome increased energy prices relative to  other costs. It means that renewable energy become more affordable. It means we will conserve energy more (while complaining I admit) and emit less carbon dioxide.

And if we want to spend money helping disadvantaged people – and I think we should – we should spend it to help them use less energy rather subsidising their use of more energy.

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‘Confusopoly‘: a small number of firms make the price of their  offering so confusing that no one can work out which company offers the best deal. Mobile phone operators and Insurance Companies are the masters of this art, but Energy Companies give them a good run for their money.

Efergy e2 Wireless Electricity Monitor

The Efergy e2 wireless electricity meter.

A while ago I reviewed a previous Efergy wireless electricity meter and commented on its usefulness, but noted that the unit wasn’t very accurate – it was about 25% in error when compared with my domestic electricity meter. In order to find that out,  I had to read the daily total of units used off the screen of the unit, and plot the data on a spreadsheet and then compare it with the domestic electricity meter over a period of many months. Not many people can be bothered with that type of kerfuffle.

But the device was still useful. Occasionally I would look at the amount of electricity being used in the house, and then walk around switching things on and off and see how much the consumption changed. However, the unit could only really detect changes in consumption of about 10 watts and so the readout could be a little bit noisy, but it was still useful.

A couple of months ago I was contacted by Efergy who asked me if I would like to test their new wireless unit, the Efergy e2. This one should be very accurate because it works by piggy-backing on the domestic electricity meter: simply measures the flashes of light that the meter produces for every one thousandth of a kilowatt hour (an electricity unit) that it uses. Additionally the unit connects to a PC or Mac and data can be downloaded to allow the user to monitor consumption trends over time. It sounded fantastic: accurate and convenient. I happily agreed to review the unit and Efergy kindly sent me one – free of charge! I always knew writing this blog would pay off one day!

Installation

The basic setup of the unit was easy - and I was quickly monitoring electricity consumption. However, the software installation was not so straightforward. Installation on my iMac was ridiculous, requiring installation of 3 separate programmes and then a re-start. And after all that, it still didn’t work. Efergy really need another way to do this. Installation on PC was a little more straightforward requiring only that I downloaded an up-to-date version of the software from their web site.

Software

The Efergy e-link Software. It has a non-standard interface, quirky controls, the scaling of the graphs is random and there is no way to get at your own data. Click for a larger version.

Once the connection problems were sorted out, I downloaded some data from the unit to the PC. The software allows you to see how your consumption has varied hour-by-hour through the day, or day-by-day through the month. However, the controls are quirky and non-standard: the graph’s scale changes from one day to the next making it difficult to visually compare one day with another; the units it uses to plot the data are -effectively – random numbers; and the writing is so small and written in green on grey so that it is almost unreadable.

However, after instruction from Efergy I did manage to download data to my PC – Ahhh!…At last I felt like I was in control. The software saves the data in an old Excel file format which is easy to open and plot. The graph below shows the number of kWhs used, averaged over a period of 1 hour – effectively the average power consumption – hour by hour for the last month. I could also have just downloaded the total number of kWhs used daily. Why the built-in software can’t plot these graphs is a mystery to me.

This is just the kind of data I love to see. I don’t mind the peaks on this graph – they are the dishwasher and the tumble dryer - but this data tells me that no matter what I do, my house uses around 350 watts of electricity (more than £1/day or £365/year) whether I am at home or not! I will get to the root of that!

Electricity Consumption Click for larger Graph

Hardware

Aside from reviewing your energy usage, one of the key uses of this type of device is to walk around one’s home and see the effect of switching things on and off – Efergy call this the ‘Energy Now’ function*. The previous model was just about OK at this, but it wasn’t very accurate at low power levels – as I mentioned above the readings fluctuated by a few watts making the useable resolution around 10 watts. But the technology Efergy have employed in this unit is potentially much more accurate. By simply recording the time between pulses from the electricity meter, they could have made an extremely accurate meter with a resolution of around 1 watt. But instead they chose not too – apparently in a bid to extend battery life. IMHO this was a poor decision.

Instead of recording the time between pulses, the unit records ‘How many pulses occur in 30 seconds’. Let me explain. For a typical meter, houshold consumption of 120 W will cause one pulse per 30 seconds. 240 W  will cause two pulses per 30 seconds etc. If you are using say 180 W, then sometimes there will be one pulse in a 30 second period, and sometimes there will be two. This unit will tell you that your electricity usage is oscillating between 120 W and 240 W and you will wonder what is switching on and off. But nothing is. In short the ‘Energy now’ function has measurement resolution of 120 W – around 10 times worse than the previous version of this unit, and functionally useless. Grrrrr…

Summary
The idea of piggy-backing on existing metering technology is smart and Efergy tell me that future units will incorporate my suggestion for measuring the time between pulses and so those units will also be very sensitive for monitoring consumption in the ‘Energy now’ mode. Sadly existing units won’t be able to be modified.

And presumably they will eventually make software that doesn’t irritate people and which works on Macs.

The selling point of this unit is the ability to download data to a PC and to look at usage over a long period of time in detail. This is very valuable and personally I would buy it just for this function. When they sort out the ‘Energy Now’ issue this will be a great little unit which I would recommend to anyone.

You can find the Efergy web site here

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* It should be ‘power now’ not ‘energy now’, but Efergy say they used this metrological inexactitude in order to communicate more clearly.

Another side of Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison, possibly the greatest inventor of all time. Picture from Wikipedia

What does one leave behind after death? Well, there are grieving family and friends. Occasionally there is a small amount of money. Very occasionally there is a body of work that has influenced society or history. And very, very occasionally there is a precious seed – a quotation that seems wise or prescient.

Thomas Alva Edison left all of the above, but there is one quotation in particular to which I would like to draw your attention.

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

Wikiquote attributes this to a conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone (1931).

There are many other fine quotations to be found from Thomas Edison, but this one surprised me. I had imagined that this kind of conception was essentially a modern concern, from the latter half of the 20th Century. That his mind should have been so directed nearly 100 years ago impresses me enormously.

We could do with someone of his ilk today. In his own words:

I find out what the world needs. Then, I go ahead and invent it.

Thomas Alva Edison: we need you now!

Recognising the future when we see it

The future: Just how different will it be? Picture Copyright Disney

Fifty years ago, when I was 2 years old, the Scientific American wrote:

The possibility of applying machines of the digital-computer type to the problem of information retrieval has spurred an increasing number of workers. If we could perfect an information retrieval machine, the wisdom accumulated in the libraries of the world would be more readily available.

And during my lifetime, the seemingly unfeasible challenge of ‘perfecting an information retrieval machine’ has been solved. In other words, 50 years ago someone spotted the possibility that already existing trends could transform the world. And it happened.

I was reminded of this by an optimistic TED talk by Amory Lovins on how we can continue to live advanced lifestyles, but perfectly sustainably. He asserted that by 2050, the USA could transform its energy outlook, living sustainably, reducing carbon emissions by 80%, and all without any new inventions.

Now 2050 is a year I could conceivably live to see. I had planned to die in 2040, but if things are looking as good as Mr. Lovins implies I might stick around. His presentation style is dull, but the prospect he outlined seems exciting, at least as realistic, and much more desirable than that foreseen by Tim Jackson in his vision of a sustainable future.

The talk is filled with details but there are two basic themes: transportation – which currently is based around oil – and electricity supply – which currently is based around coal and gas. He envisages that both fields will be transformed. Transportation will become primarily based on electric vehicles, with residual use of biofuels by aeroplanes. The electricity for the electric vehicles and much else would be generated by a smart electrical grid  driven by sustainable technology, but with some residual use of gas.

His basic narrative is as follows:

• Currently 67% of fuel use is used to move the car, not its contents. When carbon-fibre composites replace steel in the construction of cars, then the weight savings will allow smaller engines, which will require lighter bodies and a virtuous circle will drive big fuel savings and make electric cars economical. Eventually the change would happen for lorries and buses. Various policies and trends would drive the elimination of petrol as a fuel.
  • ‘Feebates’ would tax older cars and subsidise newer more efficient ones.
  • Road pricing would reduce congestion
  • Alternative communities – ride sharing – would use cars more efficiently.
  • Smart growth – building houses near places of work and shopping – reduce the need for car travel.
  • Traffic management efficiency will reduces stops and starts.
• As a result of all these changes, ‘peak oil’ will come in demand not supply.
• At the same time demand for electricity would fall:
  • Referring to a retrofit of the windows in the Empire State Building, he cites massive improvements in the use of heating and cooling
  • 60% of energy is used to run motors, and he says 32 specific improvements will reduce this load
  • Plant re-designs using fatter pipes and smaller pumps save energy and capital costs.
• And renewable costs would fall
  • Germany has more solar workers that the US has steel workers
  • For each of the last 4 years half of new capacity has been renewable and total installed capacity now exceeds nuclear (60 GW). This much renewable power generation can be built every year.
  • Replace coal-fired stations with gas-fired stations.
  • Use a distributed grid model with linked micro-grids.
  • Reward utility companies for reducing people’s bills not selling them more electricity.

Now there are any number of holes that can be picked in this narrative. Will electric cars really take off? Do we even know how to mass produce carbon fibre products? Do we have enough lithium on Earth to build all those batteries? And so on. That is not the point.

• Firstly it is good to hear any narrative which explains how, starting where we are now, we can make things better without having to beat ourselves up about bad we have all been.
• Secondly, the USA that Mr. Lovins anticipates in 2050 is quite different to that which exists today. ‘Alternative’ communities and ‘building houses near to where people work’ while mundane ideas in themselves, represent significant departures from historical trends. These social changes are just as radical as the technological changes upon which he dwells.
• And finally, the details don’t matter. The person who wrote the words at the head of the article might have envisioned – as the head of IBM was alleged to have done – that there might be a need for as many as 5 computers world-wide. The idea was correct, but the implementation was radically – and unimaginably – different.

My friend Ed - aneasthetised  by the dullness of the talk – asked me: is this really possible? And the answer is, ‘Yes, it is possible. But it is far from inevitable’. As you might imagine, Shell and BP have a more conventional view of how things will develop.