“The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity — then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective” David Suzuki
I ended the last post with the question for All Electric Vehicle (EV) true believers, “where does the electricity to charge the EV come from?” Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for electrical systems, but I temper my enthusiasm with a reality check. I see countries pushing policies to mandate EV use by all their citizens by 2030-2050, without the benefit of any real discussion. Even the ‘green’ movement’ is blind to the realities of what they support in an unthinking gung-ho fashion.
I know it sounds great to say it comes from renewable energy sources to assuage any guilt about continuing to run an EV from the grid systems, but the reality is a lot harsher. One of my charts from my energy lectures addresses these problems in a simple way. There are basically three phases of electrical/energy generation: The fuel generation technology phase, which is the manufacture of the technology needed to generate or capture the energy; the utility phase, which is the consumer usage of the energy, and; the disposal phase (the consequences of the system in which pollution is generated and/or the technology has lived its lifespan and has to be decommissioned, disposed of, or somehow recycled in a system yet to be invented.
The first level was the fossil fuel culture in which we burned fossil fuels to release the energy (noting that fossil fuels are ancient photosynthetic capture of energy now stored within the chemical bonds of the fossil fuels, released by burning (oxidation)) – usually to super-heat water to high pressure steam to spin a steam turbine. Since fossil fuels were initially plentiful, the modern electrical grid systems were set up to transmit over long distances and distribute within smaller regional usage areas. This was achieved by stepping up the voltage substantially, transmitting it over high tension lines, and then stepping the voltage down at local transformer stations for distribution to homes and businesses.
It is here that the second law of thermodynamics gets in the way and about 5-6% of the energy generated is lost during transmission and distribution. Now 5-6% doesn’t sound like a big deal, but when you are talking about grid systems, it adds up to a massive amount of lost energy. In the US for instance, it adds up to more than 70 Trillion BTUs (British Thermal Units) lost – more than 200,000 BTU per capita (the equivalent of heating 540 liters of water to boiling, lost). (One BTU is the amount of heat energy required to raise one pound of water by 1°F, or 2.2 BTUs to heat a liter of water by 0.56°C.) And I doubt that every other country in the world is much different.
Now getting to all that first level of fossil fuels during the first phase requires immense amounts of energy to dig, drill, and transport to energy generation sites , which also involves immense amounts of pollution and environmental/ecological damage and degradation with all its myriad, consequent environmental issues.
In our attempts to be cleaner and greener, we started developing the second level energy generation – the current renewables. The only thing clean and green about them is the utility phase. I discussed this in detail in an earlier post (see link), but it is a sobering realization that while an improvement, current renewables are not the solution we need if we are to achieve sustainability. They are just a stop-gap solution.
The third level are technologies we have already but they require a lot of investment and infrastructure improvements. And yet, even with these options, the logistics of attaining sustainability are still beyond our reach. We need a radical change in how we use energy and also in thinking beyond the national grid systems that currently dominate our electrical usage behaviors. For starters we need to re-localize all our electrical generation such that every building generates its own energy, and HVAC. The Thorium reactors would then be used primarily for industrial needs and hydrogen could be both an energy storage system as well as an alternate fuel system.
The greatest challenge will be to build this new kind of infrastructure as a public works project and not a corporate profit system. This is reminiscent of the great sewer projects of the 1800s and the extensive high-speed motorways that crisscross many countries for example. It has to be built because it is the best social option for now and not because it is a money-making system.
Since the 1980s, big business has dominated our lives with a profit generation mentality. The great railroads of the 1800s were built on this model, but with governmental backing, but at least a lot of the money was funneled back into the rail system projects. Today, money has become its own goal and the wealth funnel moves cash up to the financial elites where it is merely reinvested in the stock exchanges and in corporate take-overs of both the commercial and the governmental systems.
If, or when, we reach the fourth level of using quantum energy, that will be an absolutely disruptive and transformational game changer of previous unknown proportions in how humanity has ever lived. It would mean ‘free-energy’ for everyone with no ability to control it by any hierarchies. I can’t imagine that the hierarchies will be keen to let their power, greed and control go. A sustainable society would mean no control and we must remember that we don’t really need them, but they need us. We literally will need to trust ourselves and simply walkaway from their control.
The personal transformations will mean a whole new perspective, a spiritual one, on how we live and interact with each other and the natural world. As the Suzuki quote at the start of this post states, we have to think beyond the paradigms that have captured us for so long and make the effort to transform our thinking and our ways of being! Our whole systems of morals will not need such a radical overall since I think we already have the foundations located within each of us already – we all long for peace and harmony. It’s a matter of making them a prevalent part of every decision we make and choosing joy, happiness and harmony rather than the acrimony pushed onto us by the controllers to keep us in line.
To be Continued ……………
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