Stages towards sustainable energy systems

There will be a few steps in a change to sustainable and large scale energy systems. The stages will overlap and they will last for decades. The technology will be continually updated and, as with computers, the hardware and software will need to be continually replaced to keep up with the best that is available. This is a very different model for energy infrastructure compared to the traditional large engineering projects to build centralised power stations.

1. Build a Smart Grid Framework
2. Install renewable sources of energy and energy storage capacity
3. Shut down major sources of greenhouse gas emissions
4. Actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

A first stage is to build up a FRAMEWORK to which renewable energy sources, energy storage systems and coordinating control systems can be added seamlessly to the grid and local energy systems.  In this stage you may not see much being added in the way of generating capacity but you will see improvements from energy efficiency. This stage is about building the Smart Grid.

A second stage is about adding renewable energy sources of energy and a comparable energy storage capacity. This will happen over a number of scales from a household with a few solar panels on the roof, to large wind farms and solar thermal power stations. There will be network based energy storage and private energy storage. It might help to have an integrated logistical management systems approach to supplying energy, with energy being warehoused in buildings containing a large number of high capacity batteries. This stage can best be implemented once there is a Smart Grid infrastructure to plug the renewable sources and energy storage units into and then to coordinate the new systems with. There may be piecemeal advances while the Smart Grid is being developed. Introducing a fleet of plug-in electric vehicles belong to this second stage.

Note the difference in language usage for energy systems between the emphasis on ‘power’ which is a critically important factor when there is no local energy storage capacity and ‘energy’ for a system that includes an energy storage capacity. An energy system with a large storage capacity could charge from the grid at low and variable power rates, but the energy storage could deliver a large amount of controlled power for a short period of time if that is what it was designed to do. There are system limits on the rates of energy transfer but when there is an energy storage capacity available (both with batteries for the long term and in the short term with capacitor banks), the amount of energy being stored becomes the most critically important factor.

(The contrast between power and energy may be an instructive metaphor for political organisation as well. An emphasis on personal and social autonomy and a public/political level that aims to facilitate that autonomy might be another vision for politics apart from the current centralised command and control mode of political action. )

After a while, once the Smart Grid is established and renewable sources and energy storage systems are widely installed, then we might find that the old centralised coal fired power stations are no longer needed nor financially viable. Coal power stations will be decommissioned once they are no longer needed and reliable alternatives are in place. That is a third stage where greenhouse gas emissions will fall rapidly. This depends on the two previous stages when there may be little noticeable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions seen for the effort expended. Without that Smart Grid framework, however, there won’t be anything suitable to replace coal fired power stations when they need to be closed down. Nuclear power stations are not feasible for the scale required and for many other reasons besides.

A fourth stage would be the active removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and the transformation of those greenhouse gases into chemically neutral and stable solids for waste disposal. The aim would be to reduce atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases first to safe levels and then perhaps to pre-industrial levels. An energy system that is based around coordinated renewable sources and energy storage would have to include a level of energy redundancy for that energy system to be reliable over time. For the Smart Energy Systems to be reliable, in other words, you would have to generate slightly more energy than what you will need to use overall. That redundancy could be used to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

The first and second stages will cohere into the new Smart Energy Systems that will persist and be continually redeveloped for as long as there is a technically competent human civilisation, while the third and fourth stages will be temporary and short-lived even if the fourth stage extends well past this twenty-first century. Ultimately, energy will be sourced from the sun by solar collector satellites if we can collectively jump the current hurdles to sustainable energy systems that are now in front of us. Our generation is burdened with a great responsibility.

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In theory, an emissions trading scheme should help the Smart Grid industries establish themselves and develop new energy efficient products for market. The emissions trading scheme is mostly to facilitate the transition – the large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will be further down the track. The arguments the opposition are making against an ETS miss the point. I also think that the lame targets and excessive compensation for the polluters means that the people putting the ETS together in Australia probably don’t understand the long term effect of an ETS and why one is beneficial (to start up a Smart Grid industry base!).

To use a medical analogy with very crude language, an ETS now is more like a vaccine that can help the body work out how to defeat a particular virus. The vaccine itself does not provide immunity against a given virus if the person does come in contact with that virus. The vaccine has taught the body, so to speak, how to deal with that particular virus should it appear. An ETS at this stage is not so much about the absolute value in greenhouse gas emission reductions in the ETS, it is more about setting up energy systems that will allow for a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It would really hurt Australian society if we did not join such a scheme, or if we adopted a scheme that deliberately sets up the biggest greenhouse gas polluters as a sheltered industry.