Energy and Technological Progress: Bridging the Gap. Part 1.

In Pursuit of Efficiency: Navigating the Dead End of Progress

These days, the energy sector is all about moving towards “renewable” and “green” energy. This shift is driven by a few main ideas. 

One big one is: 

Energy is a major source of negative impacts on the environment and humans. 

Another is: 

Energy production is tightly linked to carbon dioxide emissions.

Among these ideas, the primary focus has shifted towards addressing issues such as “Carbon dioxide”, “Pollution”, “Warming”, “Renewability”, and notably, “Efficiency”. 

While there exists a plethora of articles and discussions covering all these topics, our primary attention will be directed towards exploring the significance of “Efficiency”.

Efficiency

When evaluating the effectiveness of energy creation technologies, we typically consider key factors: the source of renewable resources, the monetary measurement per unit of energy produced, their availability, and their environmental impact.

But let’s think about how fully these parameters are disclosed. Since if we are talking about efficiency, then it must lie on several planes and take into account comprehensive facts.

For start let’s clarify the term used in this article: “Energy Generating Systems (EGS)“, which includes all stations that generate energy, such as hydroelectric power plants, nuclear power plants, gas power plants, coal power plants, solar panel-based power plants, windmills, and other types of power plants currently in use.

The volume of resources we need for the creation of an EGS (VRC)

Now let’s move on to the following designation: The volume of resources we need for the creation of an EGS (VRC). This is the accumulated volume of available fossil and mineral resources on the planet used to create the elements of a particular EGS.

When we build hydroelectric power plants, nuclear power plants, gas power plants, etc., we consume significant amounts of cement, sand, metals, and other mineral resources for their construction, including the infrastructure and equipment. Additionally, there’s the electricity consumed during all associated processes.

For windmills and solar-based power plants, the resource requirements extend to materials used to produce plastic and fiberglass, as well as silicon, lithium, and other minerals essential to these technologies.

When we consider efficiency, it’s crucial to factor in the amount of fossil and mineral resources required to create these EGS per unit of energy received. Fossil and mineral resources are limited in one way or another, and even renewable minerals are constrained by reproduction time. Thus, understanding the resource consumption per unit of energy produced is essential for evaluating efficiency.

The volume of resources utilized to generate a unit of energy (VRUE)

Next, let’s delve into the volume of resources utilized to generate a unit of energy (VRUE). As raw materials for energy production, we utilize water, gas, oil, uranium, and other nuclear materials, along with wind and solar energy, as well as waste, which also contains a diverse composition.
So now we approach energy creation when we consume the resources that are available on our planet, it’s imperative to differentiate between resource consumption for producing energy-generating infrastructure and the raw materials essential for energy production itself.

These both indicators, VRC and VRUE, together provide us with an answer to the question of how many resources we consume to create a unit of energy and what their final overall efficiency is.

Cycle from Efficiency to Stall

Now, let’s examine an example of how, in our pursuit of one technology, we overlook important efficiency factors.

• (a) It’s important to note that silicon, a primary component in creating solar panels today is also crucial for manufacturing microcircuits and electronic parts.
• (b) Microcircuits play a pivotal role in our progress by being directly linked to the development of electronic technologies that is the basis of our progress. 
• (c) As electronic technologies advance, energy consumption increases, leading to a greater need to expand power generating stations.
• (d) However, as we focus on developing energy consumption, we rapidly deplete silicon reserves by prioritizing solar panel production.

With this approach, we will rapidly lead to an increase in the end cost of microcircuits and, as a result, an increase in the cost of our own development. 

This creates a cycle where lack of knowledge and our failure to grasp the efficiency of technology usage and energy consumption leads us to a dead end in our own development.

When discussing efficiency, it’s essential to broaden our focus beyond the immediate positive impacts within our established boundaries and also consider the limitations these boundaries impose. 

We must acknowledge situations where a single, finite resource is distributed among multiple technologies, particularly when these technologies are interdependent and rely on each other’s advancement. 

In cases where one technology depends on a single source while others could potentially utilize multiple sources, and they mutually contribute to each other’s progress, we inadvertently impose unnecessary constraints on our advancement.

Question

And here one crucial question emerges from this reflection: 

Have we truly explored the full spectrum of combination of modern technologies in the context of energy production and consumption, considering their efficiency application prospects, and looking ahead at least one or two generations?

To be continued …