A Paradigm Shift in Energy Supply

 

The paper by Desing and Widmer on the "Sunflower Society" has been published today on "Biophysical Economics and Sustainability." It is about what we need most: a new paradigm for a new society that can abandon the old fossil paradigm!

Abstract

The worsening climate crisis impels society to accelerate climate action. The attainable speed of the energy transition is ultimately limited by the available energy to build the replacing renewable infrastructures. Decarbonizing the energy system by replacing dispatchable fossil with variable renewable power requires energy storage to match supply with demand. Current storage technologies are energetically expensive to build and operate, thus the demand for storage shapes the fastest possible transition and the probability to exceed 1.5 °C heating. This study explores and quantifies the effect of demanded storage and its technological progress on the fastest possible transition constrained only by energy. The simulation results using three exemplary storage technologies show that storage substantially delays the transition and increases the probability to exceed 1.5 °C heating. Technological progress, if materialized fast, can reduce energy costs of storage; however, storage demand remains a critical driver for climate risks. Consequently, minimizing storage demand through a supply-driven power system effectively reduces climate risks—a paradigm shift towards a solar-aligned “sunflower society”.

Sunflower society: a new vision for a climate compatible future

We are running out of time. Limiting global heating to 1.5°C seems almost beyond reach as the remaining carbon budget is rapidly depleting. On the contrary, we emit ever more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere; every passing minute brings us closer to the climate catastrophe.

By Harald Desing (reproduced from Medium)

The window for action is rapidly getting smaller, so I was wondering: can we accelerate the energy transition and so reduce climate risks?

Considering available energy as the only limiting factor, the transition can be surprisingly fast, in the order of years and not decades. However, energy storage is decisive: the more we want, the slower the transition gets, because current storage technologies are energetically expensive either to build — like batteries — or to operate — like synthetic fuels. We can address this dilemma in two ways: either by investing in the development of new storage technologies with both low embodied energy and high efficiency. But, technology development takes time, which we haven’t any more. Or, we align our energy demand to renewable supply as best as we can, minimizing the demand for storage.

Over the past decades, we have become accustomed to use energy whenever we want it. This jeopardizes a fast transition, as matching our current consumption patterns to renewable supply would require a tremendous amount of storage. In the transition debate, this is often regarded as the key barrier to reach a fossil-free energy system.

In contrast to biophysical limitations for saving a hospitable climate, our consumption patterns are not a given. We can and we need to rethink fundamentally the way we use energy. Following the course of the sun, just like sunflowers do, we can schedule our most energy intensive activities around midday and summer, while reducing the demand at night and in winter to its bare minimum.

Such a paradigm shift primarily requires a different vision; a vision that breaks the chains of ever faster, higher, bigger, better; keeping us in a futile spiral of environmental destruction, mental distress, greed and competition. With more technology, more production and working harder, we will neither save the planet nor create a desirable future.

Instead, we need less of everything physical and more of everything human. I will introduce here the vision of a sunflower society, which aims for achieving climate stability through the following principles:

Avoiding energy demand also avoids storing it: sufficiency in lifestyles; improving energy efficiency for demand that is hard to shift, such as lighting in the night.

Provide all energy through solar PV on the already sealed surface of buildings, parkings and other infrastructure: this avoids land conversion and does not impair wildlife; building oversize PV capacity comes at much less energy and material expenses and can help avoiding storage through curtailment.

Concentrate energy demand around peak sun hours: stimulated by hourly energy tariffs that reflect the true costs of storage; shifting from continuous to batch operations of industrial processes; changing behaviour patterns and concentrate physical activities to sun hours.

Use technologies that do not require storage: for example, grid-connected modes of transport, such as trains and trolleybuses, instead of battery-electric vehicles.

Shift active energy demand to passive embodied energy in materials: upgrade homes to passive houses; read books, shared through libraries, instead of online content in the evenings

As we tend to perceive “less” as sacrifice, I’m convinced that any vision for a sustainable future needs to be perceived as a true step forward. In contrast to the prevailing techno-optimist narrative, the vision of a sunflower society can lead to a substantial increase in everything that truly matters in life: quality time, cooperation, community, recognition, support, friendship, love,…

Less is more — for example, living in a small space reduces energy demand per person fundamentally. And, one has less space to pile up useless stuff, reducing consumption and all worries associated with it in return. It reduces the time spent working to afford one’s home and for keeping it in good repair. Simply, there is more quality time and mental capacity available for oneself, one’s family and community.

Reducing and shifting mobility has a similar effect. Travelling and moving around are essential for opening and enriching one’s mind as well as building and interacting in communities. However, this can be much better achieved in slow and public means of transportation: the journey is the reward. Meeting people you would have otherwise not met, experiencing the distance and nature you would have otherwise just rushed by leaves one certainly with a richer and different experience than expected. And needless to say, not owning a car saves you a lot of lost time for driving, working to afford it, caring about it, sitting in traffic jams, searching for parking,… On top of that, public transport has about a hundred to thousand times lower risks than driving one’s own car. And, what speaks against renting or sharing a car for those occasions when one really needs it?

Imagine car free cities: what an improvement in life quality could that be! Imagine the public space we can reclaim for our communities: urban gardening, parks, playgrounds, sports areas, open-air festivities, flea markets — all in front of our doorsteps. No air pollution, no noise pollution, no car accidents — who can truly say that this would be a step backward rather than a huge leap forward?

Building a sunflower society will enable us to get rid of fossil fuels in a matter of years, reducing cumulative carbon emissions and consequently climate risks. It will further free up capacity for the next gargantuan task after the urgent energy transition: removing excess CO2 from the atmosphere and restore ecosystems.

Renewables are the new Killer App

  

Image courtesy of Tsung Xu

It had to come, and it is coming. Silicon Valley is suddenly discovering that renewables are the next big thing, a new "killer app" poised to sweep the market and eliminate the obsolete, dirty, and uneconomic fossil fuels. Up to now, Silicon Valley's venture capitalists and entrepreneurs had been snubbing renewable energy. The common idea was that all killer apps are software. They are new fads on social media: things like Zuckerberg's "Meta," that nobody know what it is, but it is supposed to be something, Virtual, in any case.

But no, a killer app doesn't need to be purely virtual. Before the fashion of web things, the innovations that swept the market were not virtual. Think about that: personal computers, cell phones, even the Internet is not virtual, it is a real network of cables and connections. But it doesn't matter if a product is virtual or not. The important thing is the dynamics of the system. Things sold in a market are part of a system you may call CAS (complex adaptive system). These systems are subjected to rapid growth and rapid collapse as well. It is the way of the feedbacks. Positive feedback can generate a virtual killer app,  or it can affect a pretty real product that sweeps the market and kicks out the competition. 

This is a point that Silicon Valley types (who don't need to reside in Silicon Valley) understand very well: the secret of positive feedback is economies of scale (you can say that a product "scales"). What scales, grows. Which is what renewables are doing right now. They are scaling, generating the feedback that pushes them to grow.

Renewables as a disruptive and growing technology is hardly the way they are described in the mainstream debate. Most people see renewable energy as little more than a toy for "greens", even the most optimistic ones see them as something that may help us, but they are so limited that they will help us only if we accept to become abjectly poor.  And that, unfortunately, seems to be exactly what we are facing, especially if we accept a condition described in Newspeak with the term "saving energy." We'll be happy and own nothing. Sure! After all, who needs to eat to be happy? The brains of the people who think that fossils are indispensable are fossils, too.

Now, be careful. I am not telling you that we face a bright future that includes flying cars and weekends on the Moon, as it was the use in the 1950s. Not at all. What the pessimists say is not wrong. It is true that the fossils fuels are running out, that the climate is going to hell (almost literally), that the planet is overcrowded and, in addition, that instead of trying to do something useful, we rather enjoy playing the game of war. Homo sapiens (?), Yeah, sure....

What I am telling you is that the future will be different, disruptive, and rapidly changing. If you emphasize negative feedbacks, then you see imminent collapse -- which is in fact inevitable for all fossil fuel-based technologies, including that meta-technology we call "Industrial Economy". If you instead  emphasize positive feedback instead, you see how renewable energy is on the verge of wiping out all the old energy technologies, generating a whole new set of technologies. That will include a new meta-technology that perhaps we will continue to call "The Economy" but which will be completely different from the current one. Yes, the world will be different. Very different. 

The beauty of the situation is that the future is determined by these strongly non-linear feedback factors: at the same time we face enormous risks, but also fantastic opportunities. If the negative feedbacks win, it is the "Seneca Effect" ("growth is sluggish, but ruin is rapid"). If, instead, the positive feedbacks win, it will be the "Anti-Seneca Effect" ("ruin is sluggish, but growth is rapid"). 

This is the Seneca Curve, you probably know it already:

Then, take a look at the "Anti-Seneca" curve. It is the opposite

So, the positive feedbacks associated with renewable energy are giving us a unique opportunity in the history of humanity. We are facing one of those disruptive transitions that change everything, but it is not automatic that it will take place. We could collapse so quickly that there won't be time for renewable energy to develop to the point where it stands on its own. Or, we could remain so tenaciously attached to fossils that the transition to renewables is impossible, using for example bureaucratic, legal, etc.obstacles. Or climate change could sweep away human beings from this planet. But overall, there are good reasons to be optimistic. At least we have a fighting chance to avoid  returning to the Stone Age! 

To go more in depth into this subject, I suggest to you two documents. The first is an article by Tsung Xu, "A Guide to the Clean Energy Transition." It is a monumental work that examines many details of the renewable transition. One of its several good things is the dynamic view. Maybe you'll find it a little too optimistic and, indeed, the future is always full of surprises. But the article is correct, clear, comprehensive, and it includes an absolutely spectacular bibliography. 

The other article that I suggest to you is "Rethinking Climate Change" by James Arbib, Adam Dorr, and Tony Seba. It is another well documented study that also has a clear dynamic perspective of how things can grow in complex systems.

If you want to learn more, there are also several academic papers published in academic journals. There is one that myself and several colleagues are working on that has been recently submitted to the "IEEE Access" journal. Sorry that I can't share it yet, we have to wait for the definitive version. Coming in no more than a couple of months.