Foto: Nuon/Jorrit Lousberg
While the Corona-Pandamic is indeed far from over, speculations about the future giving hope in these dark times. Even the large EU rescue plan, which also includes a strong green component seems to be not enough as Greta Thumberg point out (in the Guardian). Joe Biden announced a plan for Green Energy, which will nevertheless will be diffucult to implement. (both links Guardian) Are Greta Thumberg or Oliver Milman too strict or too pessimitic? No, that is not the problem, but hope alone is not enough for creating a change in the problem of climate change. There are real complexities involved. Recently Jeff Gibbs and Roger Moore tried to show some of the problems "Green Energy" is going to face (youtube-link to the film), but they really showed is that it is not easy to make a film about such a complex matter (as the critics of "debunked" showed, see also the Wikepedia-page for more backgronds). While there are films about climate change and environmental problems, e.g. "A Fierce Green Fire" or the "4.Revolution", about a shift in the energy production (in German), these matters are not easy to explain in a film. Wikipedia-pages (not one page alone) can convey a better picture, but for this several pages has to be combined. At first there is no page called "climate change", there is the page "climate variablity and change", if one searches for "climate change", there is a direction to "Global warming" (see the link), which is the effect of climate change globally, not locally. There might be place, which acutally get colder, an example could be Europe, if the North Atlantic Current would get weaker, not only because of Global warming, but also changes in ocean. In short: "Global warming" is only a headline of a much more complex process. The complexity is also affecting the discussion about climate change, which is indeed a very complex change, a much better conceptual tool is the Anthropocene debate. But how should the New & Green deal? For the reduction of complexity I have to concentrate one factor, which seems to of central importance: energy denisity (Wp). Solar power has, compared to coal or Gasoline, a low energy density. The means you need to create very big solar panels to create the energy, that is saved in a liter of fuel (Homer-Dixon 2006). And more problems: 1. solar power is difficult to save. Batteries are still expensive and their lifespan is not so long. 2. Intermittency: If it is cloudy the sun is weaker and there is not so much energy. 3. EROI (=Energy return on investment, Wp). Solar energy needs large investments and there is less money coming back, compared to fossil energy. Fossil energy is developed since over 150 years and EROI is still large. All these four reason are not strong enough to impede thenecessary transition from fossil energy to renewable energy, but they show the complexity of this transition. It can be seen in Germany, which was one of the first countries to start an Energy transition (an URL about some of the problems), but still a lot of problems are unsolved. But these arguments are largely not heard in public, specialists of course know some of the problems, but maybe it is difficult to find ONE specialist, who has the solution for all the problems, because there are not only technical, but also social (see social engineering) or political. It seems to be, that a more decentral energy supply would be helpful, for a transition to renewable energy, but here are massive economic interests involved, which make such transitions difficult (even in Sweden, see the case of the rafinery Lysekil). And an international deliberation is more needed than ever. Not only for specialists, but for the international public as well.
Reference
Homer-Dixon, Thomas (2006), The upside of down, Resource and Conflict Analysis, (Souvenir press), London
No comments:
Post a Comment