To save the planet, the problem is cost

Friday, March 06, 2009

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Professor Daniel Nocera, Professor of Energy and Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Personalised energy is a renewable technology that can save the planet in 1 x 6 billion ways. In pursuing the goal of personalised energy, science and engineering drive inextricably to the heart of the energy challenge by addressing the triumvirate: secure, carbon neutral, and plentiful low cost energy. Since energy use scales directly with wealth, point of use solar energy will put individuals, in the smallest village in the developing world and in the largest city of the developed world, on a more level playing field. And the individual will be energy secure as they will control the energy on which they live. More powerfully, the possibility of generating terawatts of carbon-free energy may be realised by making available personalised energy to the three billion low energy users and three billion people to inhabit our planet over the next half century.

Imagine your home as its own power station and gas station. This is not a pipe dream. There is no fundamental basic science show-stopper to derail this vision. Photo-voltaics generate electricity efficiently enough. Catalysts exist to split water to hydrogen and oxygen, which can be stored and combined in a fuel cell at a later time to generate electricity when the sun doesn't shine. If all the basic science for personalised energy is known, then why hasn't the dream of a highly distributed energy system catered to the individual not been enacted? It's all about cost. A market penetrable energy system for the individual must be inexpensive. Discovery of new materials, new reactions and new processes are needed to permit personalised energy to be an attractive economic alternative. If science and engineering can decrease the cost of personalised energy through discovery, then the development of the non-legacy world can occur within an energy infrastructure that is of the future and not the past. Considering that it is the six billion non-legacy users that are driving the enormous increase in energy demand by mid-century, a research target of personalised energy provides science and engineering with its most direct path to providing a solution to the energy challenge. By developing an inexpensive 24/7 solar energy system for the individual, science and engineering will make available a carbon-neutral energy supply for 1 x 6 billion.

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Mike O'Brien, Energy and Climate Change Minister, Department of Energy and Climate Change

Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing our planet. That is why the UK is leading the world in fighting this danger by enshrining in law some of the most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Two-thirds of our carbon emissions come from the energy sector, so it is vital we clean it up. To achieve an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050, we need energy that is not only low carbon, but affordable and sustainable too.

Alongside new nuclear and clean coal technology, renewable energy has a key part to play in saving the planet from the damaging effects of climate change. The UK has signed up to dramatically increase the amount of energy we produce from green sources. 15% of our energy consumption is to come from renewables by 2020. To make this happen, the government is working on a Renewable Energy Strategy to be published this year. This document will set out the detailed pathway towards achieving our 2020 goal.

To encourage the building of more green schemes, we will strengthen our existing financial incentives. These will be weighted to bring on further investment in technologies like off-shore wind farms and marine projects. We will also introduce new incentives for small-scale generation and renewable heat.

We're improving access to the national electricity grid, removing planning barriers, tackling supply chain block-ages and supporting innovation.

Homeowners and communities will be able to take their own active part in the fight against climate change.

By installing wind turbines or solar panels, for example, they will be financially rewarded for the electricity or heat they produce.

But we must all take account of the energy we use. The government has already committed to making all new homes zero carbon from 2016, but we need to make changes to existing stock too. Later this year, we will set out how we propose to make more homes warm and energy-efficient. In a time of high fuel prices, this will help to bring down costs of bills.

The government acknowledges the scale of these ambitions, but we are fully committed to them. The changes we make now will have a profound effect on the future of our energy supplies, our environment and the planet on which we live.

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Professor Arthouros Zervos, President, European Renewable Energy Centre

The world needs to move away from its addiction to fossil fuels into a fossil-fuel free economy: what we need is a complete transformation in our energy supply, consumption and distribution while maintaining our economic growth. Saving our planet requires nothing short of an energy revolution.

What are the solutions?
The technologies to mitigate climate change already exist. They are available. Renewable energy technologies vary in their technical and economic maturity, but they all produce little or no greenhouse gas. Some of these technologies are already competitive. Their competitiveness will further improve as they develop technically, as fossil fuel prices rise with oil shortage and as CO2 emissions are given an effective price.

Renewable energy sources currently account for 13% of the world's primary energy demand. According to a scenario by the European renewable energy industry together with Greenpeace International, 50% of the world's energy mix could come from renewable energy in 2050. It is economically and environmentally feasible – through energy-efficiency and a massive uptake of renewable energy – to cut global CO2 emissions in the energy sector by almost 50% within the next 40 years, and diversify our energy mix away from a few resource dependable sources into many more.

Challenges ahead are political not technical
There are no real technical obstacles in the way. All that is missing is political support. The European Union agreed in December 2008 on what will be the most ambitious piece of legislation on renewable energy in the world, which contributes to make the EU a leader in the fight against climate change.

On the other side of the Atlantic, US President Obama promised to increase the electricity coming from renewables to 25% by 2025 and develop energy-efficiency. Obama declared recently on climate change, America "will lead, as we always have, through innovation and discovery, through hard work and pursuit of a common purpose...".

In this race between the EU and US for claiming leadership on climate change, time is quickly running out. And the real winner of this race will be the planet.

Nothing short of such a revolution will enable us to limit global warming to less than a rise in temperature of 2°C, above which the impacts become devastating. Let us all work together towards an energy revolution for the benefit of our and future generations.

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Richard Simmons, Managing Director, The Renewable Energy Centre.co.uk

The problem we face today concerning climate change is not whether the planet will survive but whether humanity will survive. If global warming reaches the levels predicted by 2050, the threat to ­humanity will become much more real and the race to reverse climate change will become a matter of life and death. The reasons so little has been achieved on a global scale thus far is because of political reticence and a lack of focus on the cause and effects to humanity.

Despite this, there has been progress in the development of renewable technologies and a large amount of media attention to the subject; however, governments around the world are still being slow to act decisively. Large-scale plans need to be implemented across every continent, in every country, and developing nations need to initiate renewable energy technologies and carbon reduction processes right from the start in order to help slow down global warming.

The fear is that decisive and long-term effective renewable energy solutions will not be installed at a global level until people actually start being affected in some of the catastrophic ways that have been predicted by scientists. Energy from the sun, water and wind has to be extracted on a major scale around the globe, and nations need to come together to use the seas, deserts and hilltops to maximise our planet's limitless resources.

The responsibility does not just rest on our politicians, however; each of us individually has to take action to reduce the energy we use and move back towards sustainable living. In order for people to take action, they either need legislation or incentive.

The technology is in place and is continually being developed in order to reduce global temperatures. However, the incentive for individuals, governments and countries to take revolutionary action is, as yet, an unseen threat to our current way of life and, as such, remains a low priority.

Perhaps in 2009, the message regarding climate change should be about saving people, not the planet. This might make the issue of climate change more relevant to the people who inhabit the world. Rest assured, if humanity ceases to survive, the planet will do 'very nicely thank you' and quite happily regenerate back to equilibrium without any interference from industry ravenous humans.