Separation concept. Lines, triangles and particle design. Illustration vectorgetty
In our future economy, every economic value chain will win, ranging from wind turbines to cables to energy services, without going through molecules. It will be significantly cheaper. CO2 emissions will be significantly lower. It will be much more efficient.
And the level of electrification that is possible and likely will probably amaze you. This series addresses the full energy needs of a modern economy and shows why the radical electrification of everything, everywhere, at all times is our future.
Let’s start with an excellent image, the Sankey diagram of energy flows from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
quadrillion BtuUS Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Look at this chart for a minute. There are variants of this in most countries around the world. The International Energy Agency maintains its own versions for the world. Most of them are not as good as LLNL. They are eye charts that underestimate one of the big problems: rejected energy.
These are the gray bars and the big gray box. That’s energy that enters the economy from coal, nuclear power, natural gas or renewable energy on the right and is then converted into waste heat that simply evaporates into the sky.
It is a very clear indicator of inefficiency. We could afford to throw away two-thirds of all energy in modern economies because fossil fuels are dirt cheap and we could use the atmosphere as a landfill with no consequences.
We won’t do that again in the future. We will only produce low-carbon electricity on the right side, getting rid of the big gray bar of discarded energy from burning coal, gas and oil to generate electricity. We will not make molecules like hydrogen or synthetic natural gas to burn into electricity because that would be much less efficient and much more expensive.
We will not burn coal, oil or gas to generate heat. The low-carbon electricity is used directly for all of our heating and cooling needs in industry, commercial buildings and our homes. Converting low-carbon electricity into molecules that we then burn to produce heat makes neither economic nor environmental sense when there are alternatives, and there are. All of our heat in the winter, hot water for our baths, fuel for cooking our food, and high temperatures for industrial processes will come from the direct use of electrons.
We will not burn gas or diesel in all vehicles that travel on our roads and rails. Everything that moves on Earth – cars, pickup trucks, motorcycles, trucks, buses and trains – is also powered by electrons. Gasoline and diesel engines are incredibly inefficient compared to electric motors, and a lot of low-carbon electricity is wasted in the production of synthetic gasoline or diesel. That means fuel costs triple or more when molecules are involved. So they won’t be.
Every boat and ship that does not sail across oceans is powered directly by electrons. That’s a remarkable amount of water transportation that will be quieter, much more efficient, and less polluting when near people. It has already begun, although, like so many things, it is invisible to most people. A current example is two battery-powered ships carrying 700 containers traveling a 1,000-kilometer route along China’s Yangtze River.
And any aircraft that doesn’t fly over oceans also runs on batteries. That’s a lot of passenger kilometers.
In fact, crossing oceans is the only place where there are molecules needed to produce energy, and we are not going to make these molecules from scratch. Producing hydrogen from low-carbon electricity or natural gas through carbon capture and then combining it with carbon from carbon capture to produce synthetic fuels such as methanol or e-diesel is a path fraught with wasted energy. It is extremely inefficient compared to producing biofuels from our rather ridiculous amounts of biological waste, such as the entire third of food that ends up in landfills annually, about 2.5 billion tons.
We will have the same lifestyle, comfort and economic value as we have today, but it will only take about half the energy to achieve it. Yes, 50% of the energy. For the US, this means that only about six times as much low-carbon electricity as the country already produces annually can power the entire economy. Six times as much wind and solar power is fairly easy to achieve in the coming decades, and it will be mostly wind and solar power.
And so a new series begins. This is the radical electrification of everything. Looking at the Sankey diagram again, I start at the bottom with transportation. Watch this area.
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Michael Barnard spends his time designing scenarios for decarbonization 80 years into the future and helping his clients – executives, boards and investors across multiple continents – make smart choices today. Whether aviation fueling, grid storage, industrial heat, biofuels, iron and steel, vehicle-to-grid or hydrogen demand – his work is based on the fundamentals of physics, economics and human nature and is shaped by the requirements and innovations of decarbonizing multiple domains . His previous leadership positions in North America, Asia and Latin America strengthened his global perspective. His work appears regularly in nonfiction and textbooks, as well as in several publications, including Forbes. He frequently speaks at conferences and events around the world.
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