Introduction
The quotation – “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” was never truer than today. The 10 most recent years are the warmest years on record. In 1976, the global temperature was 0.07°C below the century’s average, and every year since has been hotter. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) rises from 365 parts per million (ppm) in 2002 to over 420 ppm currently. The concentration of methane in the atmosphere has more than doubled over the past decades and this is responsible for 20 to 30% of climate warming. Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking by 12.2% per decade due to warmer temperatures. Antarctica is losing ice mass at an average rate of about 150 billion tons every year and Greenland is losing about 270 billion tons per year. Sea level is rising in an alarming magnitude, ocean’s warming has raised to 360 zettajoules since 1955. 90% of global warming is occurring in the ocean damaging the marine ecology. All these indicate a grim picture of the current state of our planet.
The question is about the survival of the planet and its ecological stability. While technology has contributed to climate change, new and efficient technologies on the other hand can help reduce net emissions and create a cleaner world. In many places renewable energy is now the cheapest energy source, and electric cars are become mainstream. Nature-based solutions provide levers to mitigate a portion of our carbon footprint while also supporting vital ecosystem services, biodiversity, access to fresh water, improved livelihoods, healthy diets, and food security. It also includes improved agricultural practices, land restoration, conservation, and the greening of food supply chains.
Inherently all challenges are “Energy Challenges”
Let us start with the number “sixty”, six zero. Nobel laureate, nanotechnologist Richard Smalley has estimated this number as the volume of energy that will be required for earth’s 10 billion population, sixty terawatts to be precise out of which about eight terawatts are electricity. He made this estimation during an important and influential talk nearly twenty years ago where he also laid out ten top challenges to humanity. Energy was at the top of that list along with water, food, environment, poverty, disease, terrorism, democracy. Then he concluded something very obvious – “all of these challenges are inherently energy challenges.”
The question is how to tackle these energy challenges, how do we go from 54 billion tons of greenhouse gases every year to less than zero very quickly? The urgency of climate means that the energy we use today, and all future energy really has to be abundant, sustainable and cheap. Every day the earth receives 163,000 terawatts of energy from the sun. About half of that bounces back to space, but about 80,000 terawatts arrive at the earth in a form we can use. For example, air, land and oceans convert some of that into about 870 terawatts of wind energy. This is bigger number than the number 60 we referred above. We have even got more than solar and wind. We have geothermal, biogas, biomass, hydro, nuclear. The question is how do we harness abundant, sustainable, cheap energy for all?
Alarming climate crisis and need for green energy
Let us note some of the facts of climate crisis
- Global warming: The last four years were the four hottest on record. The year 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded, according to an announcement by the World Meteorological Organization at UN climate summit at Dubai during December 2023 (COP28). If we don’t slow global emissions, temperatures could rise to above three degrees Celsius by 2100, causing further irreversible damage to the ecosystems.
- Melting of glacial shield: Glaciers and ice sheets in polar and mountain regions are already melting faster than ever, causing sea levels to rise. For example, If no action is taken, entire districts of New York, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, Osaka, Rio de Janeiro, and many other cities could find themselves underwater within our lifetimes, displacing millions of people.
- Food and water security: Global warming impacts everyone’s food and water security. Climate change is a direct cause of soil degradation, which limits the amount of carbon the earth is able to contain. Some 500 million people today live in areas affected by erosion, while up to 30 percent of food is lost or wasted as a result.
- Extreme weather and related disasters: Disasters linked to climate and weather extremes have always been part of our Earth’s system. But they are becoming more frequent and intense as the world warms. 90 percent of disasters are now classed as weather- and climate-related, costing the world economy 520 billion USD each year, while 26 million people are pushed into poverty as a result.
- Great human migration: Climate change is a major threat to international peace and security. It is a risk multiplier that makes worse already existing challenges. Droughts in Africa and Latin America directly feed into political unrest and violence. The World Bank estimates that, in the absence of action, more than 140 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia will be forced to migrate within their regions by 2050.
What is green energy
Energy is deemed green if the sources are abundant and process of generation from specific sources does not create pollution. Green energy sources also avoid mining and drilling to avoid eco-system damage. Green energy means solar, wind, hydraulic power, geothermal, biomass, biogas, biofuels (ethanol, biodiesel). It is a subset of renewable energy and more beneficial than renewables in terms of environmental impact and pollution. The graphics depict different sources of energy in relation to their benefits.
Undisputed need for energy transition globally
We may think that climate change impact has arrived in humanity’s backyard but is becoming clear that we cannot fight that in our backyard, but a long-term cross border action is imperative. With the visible threat of extremity, countries and companies are being imposed with policies and obligations. The regulations and policies may take the shape of energy management and transition, environment protection, specific business practices and may also include reporting obligations. Let us see some of the encouraging developments in the area of energy transition.
Exploit the abundance
The city of Lancaster, located in the Antelope Valley west of the Mojave Desert, has harnessed this abundance of natural resources. Lancaster receives around 300 days of sunlight, and they leveraged that advantage to build a photovoltaic network across the city. They have introduced a regulation to make photovoltaic mandatory for all new construction. The solar power is being used for public lighting, excess has been used to generate hydrogen to fuel public transportation, unemployment rate dropped from 17% in 2009 to 6% in 2023. Lancaster started its journey during 2009 and has already become a self-sufficient green energy powerhouse.
The environmental leadership
We spoke about the regulations imposed by the city council of Lancaster for its smart city drive. But regulation cannot be the only solution, there should be stewardship to nature and environmental leadership. City of Oslo in Norway has shown that. Every new construction in Oslo is a Zero Net Energy (ZNE) site now owing to the fact that the construction industry accounts for around 40% of carbon emission globally. CEO Sonja Horn of property management group Entra ASA has shown environmental leadership by incorporating the philosophy of “less new – more recycled”. The company has commissioned a building in the city of Trondheim, Norway, whose roof is covered with 3000 square meter of photovoltaic panels producing an annual average of 500,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. The surplus energy, which is nearly half of the production, is being put into a micro-grid to serve neighboring buildings and electric transportation. Rightfully the building has been named “Powerhouse”.
Path breaking circular energy economy
When we talk about industry, it is worth mentioning that industries and sectors are playing a critical role in the energy transition movement. Let’s take example of Wunsiedel, in German state of Bavaria, a rural region where forest industry is key. The city has taken a unique proposition to reuse as much energy as possible, multiple times. They are harnessing every energy that is supposed to be wasted, for example waste-heat from timber industry commercial machines. Surplus energy from waste, waste-heat, solar and wind are being used to integrate forestry, timber and energy industries. They have partnered with Siemen’s to create industry-scale-energy-storage systems to store excess energy. These storage systems allow operators to feed into grid on days when energy ecosystems aren’t running at their peak. But it is also a matter of ensuring overall grid security. To manage such decentralized energy systems, with the supply-and-demand fluctuations, they are collaborating with Siemens’ cloud-based monitoring system and open internet-of-things platform. They are also working on a big hydrogen plant for another means of storing energy. The plant will use solar and wind to produce 1350 tons of hydrogen per year. So, we see a unique collaboration within industries, where construction industry is linked to timber industry, the timber industry is linked to agriculture or forestry. So, it is an ideal example of circular energy economy which can be scaled up to all levels. The whole region of Wunsiedel has become a power plant through technology, community engagement and partnerships.
Stable grid at international level
The circular energy economy is overwhelming. But it should not be restricted to a city or region. It would be over-arching where countries should collaborate to create an international grid system, where not only technology innovations, but meaningful collaboration is also very important. We see an effort in northern Europe, where bordering countries of North Sea are helping each other to balance green energy demand. Hydraulic power stations in Norway generate gigawatts of electricity. At Kvilldal Norway, hydropower is converted for onward transmission and transmitted to Blyth in England, where gigawatts of electricity are generated from offshore wind. Interconnectors that allow green hydro energy from lakes of Norway, into Britain. So, it’s enabling the transition of green energy for Britain and can be extended easily to neighboring countries also. The world’s largest network to reliably generate energy is under construction here from 2020. It’s crucial to build large green power grids that are stable. By becoming partners in the North Sea grid through direct coast to coast border countries are inching closer to the goal of attaining energy security.
The ingredients of success “3I”: Infrastructure – Innovation – Investment
Now if we put the Paris Agreement (adopted during COP21 in December 2015 and entered in force during November 2016) in center and want to understand how the things progressing, then let the truth be told, the picture is not very encouraging. So, to harness the abundance, to build stable grid and to create a robust circular energy economy, we have to leverage three ingredients. The first one is infrastructure. We need transmission lines, roads, ports, railroads, fueling stations, human capital. As Julio Friedmann, Chief Scientist and Chief Carbon Wrangler at Carbon Direct said – “every week is infrastructure week for rest of our life.” Second ingredient is innovations like perovskites, with multi-eciton technologies like supermolecules, the output can be doubled or even tripled for solar. The third ingredient is investment. We need to move away from single-project finance to a more systemic orchestrated investment mechanism to support large scale multi-dimensional green projects.
The blind spot
The number of initiatives and developments do not match the requirements. There are a number of regulations and policies in place. But the question is about the competencies in standardization and enforcing these regulations, which has been traditionally proven more difficult. While science tells us that climate change is irrefutable, it also tells us that it is not too late to stem the tide. This will require fundamental transformations in all aspects of society — how we generate energy, leverage local industry, use resources, transform transportation, and power economies. There are examples from which we can learn and move forward.
Due to energy transition and sustainable development approach, many economic opportunities and business markets are opening up. In this fast growing technological and digital movement, a myth of conquest is being played against nature. The said industrial progress depends on so called two pillars – green energy transition and technological innovations. Though both these pillars ultimately try to address the greenhouse gas problem, but they are not virtual or dematerialized. Rather they recouple humanity with mineral extraction and on a higher scale than fossil fuels. Because in order to shift from fossil fuels to green sources of energy, we need to build physical infrastructure and advanced devices that support the transition. We need vast quantities of minerals ranging from Lithium and Manganese for battery storage to Copper for electrification to Rare Earth materials for wind turbines and semiconductors. The production level should be nearly 150 times higher than current level for next 15 years to reach to full circular energy economy. So, it requires a proper assessment of ecological cost of green energy transition. It is imperative, we need to decarbonize for survival, but the question is how fast, how well we can decarbonize. If the process, design and architecture of the transition goes wrong, there will be unprecedented crisis and geo-political unrest, but if it is done right, it will bring ultimate opportunity for sustainable economic growth and peace at a global level.
