Energy Crisis

A little online research after an evening spend with Dr RVG Menon, Mr Malcom & Mr Rajesh gave me couple interesting information to pen down this blog regarding the main challenge our civilization will face during the next decades – The generation of sustainable energy.

Worldwide energy demand is expected to grow from about 10 GTep (1010 Tep [Ton Equivalent Petrol], or 5*1019 Joule) in the beginning of the century to 15-20 GTep by 2050. Some scenarios predict even levels as high as 40 GTep. An analysis of future global petrochemical consumption needs (i.e. energy needs and/or raw material for chemical industry) implies that early petrol shortages might already appear in the mid of the century.

Not only are we running out of petrol & other non renewable energy sources, but the combustion of the same poses major environmental problems in the form of green house emissions.

While these facts start to be more and more accepted, there is still no global solution for renewable energy sources available. Such a solution should provide usable energy in very large quantities and at competitive costs, i.e. competitive in regard to today's energy prices.

Current solar solutions are either not sufficiently scalable (they are only of regional nature), or they are too costly. In most cases, their underlying business model is based on massive public subsidies (which clearly is impossible at large scale deployment), or on massively increased energy prices (at least five times as high as today) which would simply disrupt the world economy.

Among the many renewable energy sources, the potential of solar energy is at least one hundred times larger than any other renewable energy source

Image courtesy : http://www.ecosolarequipment.co.uk/images/energy_cube.jpg
Moreover, it can be shown that direct solar irradiation is the only source of energy that can satisfy the global long term energy demand - all other sources of energy are either too insignificant compared to the worldwide energy need , but they can by far not supply the necessary Gigateps of energy to satisfy the global demand. They have to be considered as auxiliary energy solutions.

Even nuclear fusion energy (should it become available soon, which is unlikely) cannot provide a global solution. Thousands of fusion plants would be needed in order to supply a significant amount of global energy; the ensuing technological and political complexity would be far too high. And the bigger threat of nuclear waste management being forced on our future generations.

Any solution for a future global energy supply must base on direct solar energy conversion at large quantities. Again, this does not mean that other forms of energy could not be interesting, but it means that a global solution can only be focusing on solar irradiation as the main supply of electric and combustible energy.

Incredible graphic.

Image courtesy : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_land_area.png

Those 6 little black dots represent the square land area required to completely satiate the entire world’s energy demands using photovoltaic cells.

Direct explanation of the above figure from Wiki Commons:

“Solar power systems installed in the areas defined by the dark disks could provide more than the world’s 2006 total primary energy demand (assuming a conversion efficiency of 8%). That is, all energy currently consumed, including heat, electricity, fossil fuels, etc., would be produced in the form of electricity by solar cells. The colors in the map show the local solar irradiance averaged over three years from 1991 to 1993 (24 hours a day) taking into account the cloud coverage available from weather satellites.”

We have seen the potential early warning for blood baths awaiting us in future, in the recent Iraq exploitation by the US. The seizure of any available fossil fuel will soon be war propaganda norms - we need to address the real issue.

Two scholars, one a Nobel Prize winner, revisit their estimate of the true cost of the Iraq war – and find that $2 trillion was too low. They consider not only the current and future budgetary costs, but the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by political uncertainty in the Middle East. The USA also spends an estimated $350 Billion on R&D for its 'defence', every year.

One could only imagine how blissful it would be if the above lavish spending was peacefully transitioned to solar energy harvesting and R&D.