I read a lot of books about a lot of stuff,
especially environment and climate change issues. From time to time, I share
quotes from those books, but not usually as long as the extract you are about
to read. Joe Laur (an author himself – check out this must
read book for business, only one of his pieces of work) suggested I read Whole
Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand. At the time of this writing I am only a
few pages into it, but the following excerpt struck me as a bit of a revelation
with respect to the need for change, and quite frankly, the economic opportunity
that lies ahead in being part of the change. The following is copied from
Chapter 1 entitled Scale, Scope, Stakes
and Speed:
“It is not accurate to say, “We can stop
climate change.’ We are now working to stop worse climate change or
much-worse-than-worse climate change.”
The most common statement of an achievable
goal for dealing with climate change these days is levelling off at 450 ppm
(ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere, so Griffith build his analysis
around that outcome. We are currently at about 387 ppm and rising fast – each year
it goes up more than 2 ppm. Griffith reminds everyone that the hope with the
450 ppm goal is that it will involve a global temperature rise of only 2
degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and that is expected to mean “large
loss of species, more severe storms, floods and droughts, refugees from sea level
rise, and other unpalatable, expensive and inhumane consequences.”
A convenient measure of energy generation
is the gigawatt: a billion watts. A large cola fired plant generates a gigawatt
of electricity in a year; so does the Hoover Dam, so does a nuclear reactor.
Multiply that times a thousand, and you have a terawatt – a trillion watts.
Humanity currently runs on about 16 terawatts of power, most of it from the
burning of fossil fuels. It’s like leaving 160 billion 100-watt light bulbs on
all of the time. That’s what is loading the atmosphere with lethal quantities
of carbon dioxide.
Griffith calculates that, in order to keep
the atmospheric concentration of CO2 at no more than 450 ppm,
humanity has to do something that is almost unimaginably difficult. We have to
cut our fossil fuel use to around 3 terawatts a year, which means we have to
produce all the rest of our power from non-fossil-fuel sources, and we have to
do it in about twenty-five years or it will be too late to level off at 450 ppm.
So, Griffith says, “Imagine someone said
you need 2 terawatts of wind, 2 terawatts of photovoltaic solar, 2 terawatts of
solar thermal, 2 terawatts of geothermal, 2 terawatts of biofuel and 3
terawatts of nuclear to give you 13 new clean terawatts. You add the existing
1.5 terawatts of biofuel and nuclear that we already use. You can also get 3
terawatts from coal and oil. That would give humanity about 17.5 terawatts –
that allows for a little growth over the 16 terawatts we currently use. What
would it take to do all of that in 25 years?”
Here’s the answer: “Two terawatts of
photovoltaic would require installing 100 square metres of 15% efficient solar
cells every second, second after second, for the next 35 years. (That’s about
1,200 square miles of solar cells a year, times 25 equals 30,000 square miles
of photovoltaic cells – about the size of
South Carolina). Two terawatts of solar thermal? If it’s 30% efficient all
told, we’ll need 50 square metres of highly reflective mirrors every second
(some 600 square miles per year). Two terawatts of biofuels? Something like 4
Olympic swimming pools of genetically engineered algae, installed every second.
(about 61,000 square miles per year, times 25 = over 5 times the size of Texas). Two terawatts of wind? That’s a
300 foot diameter wind turbine every 5 minutes (Install 105,000 turbines a year
in good wind locations, times 25). Two terawatts of geothermal? Build three
100-megawatt steam turbines every day – 1,095 a year, times 25. Three terawatts
of new nuclear? That’s a 3-reactor, 3-gigawatt plant every week – 52 a year,
times 25.”
Add it up, and when you’re done, you’ve got
an area about the size of America – “Call it Renewistan,” says Griffith –
covered with stuff dedicated to generating humanity’s energy. That’s not
counting transmission lines, energy storage, materials, and support infrastructure,
plus the costs of shutting down all of the coal plants, oil refineries, etc. I
asked Saul Griffith if he thinks we can really do it. “Technically,” he said, “it
is possible. Industrially, humanity has the collective capacity. But
politically, I don’t see how.” Then he added, “But we have to try. Why else
bother to be a human and be in this game?”
End of excerpt.
That is a lot of change that is needed. We
can all play a role by being more energy efficient. We can all play a role by
exploring renewable energy for our homes. We can all play a role by encouraging
our politicians to develop policies that make renewable energy a reality for homeowners,
small business, large business, renewable energy research and development and
renewable energy investment at the utility level.
What can you do today?