The future of energy

Brother, Can You Spare 22 Terawatts?


However, Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writes a sobering analysis of the challenge of supplying adequate energy to the world in 2050. In his article, "On the Future of Global Energy" in the current issue of Daedalus (unfortunately not online), Nocera begins with the amount of energy currently being used on a per capita basis in various countries and then extrapolates what that usage implies for a world of 9 billion people in 2050. For example, in 2002 the United States used 3.3 terawatts (TW), China 1.5 TW, India 0.46 TW, Africa 0.45 TW and so forth. Totaling it all up, Nocera finds, "the global population burned energy at a rate of 13.5 TW." A terawatt equals one trillion watt-hours.

Nocera calculates that if 9 billion people in 2050 used energy at the rate that Americans do today that the world would have to generate 102.2 TW of power—more than seven times current production. If people adopted the energy lifestyle of Western Europe, power production would need to rise to 45.5 terawatts. On the other hand if the world's 9 billion in 2050 adopted India's current living standards, the world would need to produce only 4 TW of power. Nocera suggests, assuming heroic conservation measures that would enable affluent American lifestyles, that "conservative estimates of energy use place our global energy need at 28-35 TW in 2050." This means that the world will need an additional 15-22 TW of energy over the current base of 13.5 TW.


Emphasis added. That is a staggering amount of power. So much that it's hard to get your head around those kinds of numbers. The author also notes that the direct corelation between energy scaling and standard of living are becoming somewhat looser. I would chalk that up to globalization which allows for goods to be created and/or refined elsewhere but assembled, shipped and sold from other places. That is, we conserve energy here by producing goods in another part of the world for consumption here.


So where will the extra energy come from? Relying on figures from the World Energy Assessment by the United Nations Development Program, Nocera looks at the maximum amounts of power that various non-fossil fuel sources might supply. Biomass could supply 7-10 TW of energy, but that is the equivalent of harvesting all current crops solely for energy. Nuclear could produce 8 TW which implies building 8000 new reactors over the 45 years at a rate of one new plant every two days. Wind would generate 2.1 TW if every site on the globe with class 3 winds or greater were occupied with windmills. Winds at a class 3 site blow at 11.5 miles per hour at 33 feet above the ground. And hydro-power could produce 0.7-2 TW if dams were placed on every untapped river on the earth. Nocera concludes, "The message is clear. The additional energy we need in 2050 over the current 13.5 TW base, is simply not attainable from long discussed sources—the global appetite for energy is simply too great."


Forgive the excessive bolding but this is really important. If demand outstrips supply that badly the consequences could be very serious. If demand is not met because infrastructure is not deployed (as in large parts of Africa where massive grid installations and upgrades would be required) the effect is negligible. It would make no difference to an area that never had electricity to not have it for a few more years. Whereas, if demand is in place and then supply is unable to meet that demand, things can be bad. In France, that situation led to the deaths of thousands of people from heat related causes. Such lapses in services in areas that are new consumers of electricity and with fragile governments could lead to civil unrest or worse.


Given the magnitude of the problem of fueling the future with carbon-neutral energy, Nocera argues that the only real alternative for carbon-neutral energy production is some form of solar power. More energy from sunlight strikes the Earth in one hour than humanity uses in a year. But converting sunlight into energy useful to people is a huge unsolved technological problem. In 2000, author Richard Rhodes and nuclear engineer Denis Beller calculated that using current solar power technologies to construct a global solar-energy system would consume at least 20 percent of the world's known iron resources, take a century to build and cover a half-million square miles. Clearly a lot of technological innovation needs to take place before solar becomes an option for fueling the world.


That means that without massive technological leaps and the violation of a few laws of physics sunlight ain't the answer.


Another telling example of Federal bungling in the energy field was the $20 billion wasted on President Jimmy Carter's Synfuels Corporation which was a pilot project that aimed to make oil production from coal commercially viable. It died in 1985.


Any article that gets in a shot at Carter is always good. Moving on....


No one knows now how humanity will fuel the 21st century, but Apollo and Manhattan Project-style Federal energy research projects will prove to be a huge waste of time, money and talent.


Exactly. The only way this is going to work is if there's money to be made. That demand will outstrip supply by such an enormous factor means there's lots and lots of money to be made. That alone, give me hope.

Comments

miriam sawyer said…
There are a lot of ifs in that article. Will the world population reach that figure? Maybe not. Will everone live like Americans? Perhaps.

Who would have expected Europeans to be on the brink of extinction? But they are.
The Last Ephor said…
The thing about fusion is that you'll still need to expand the infrastructure (grid) and the plants to support that demand. Fusion or fission it's the hardware that's holding us back.

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