Egypt: What Future for a Country in Distress?

 

Cairo in 2023: crowded, noisy, and polluted. These notes are not supposed to be an exhaustive description of the situation in Egypt, but just an impression from about one week spent there. 

When you arrive in Cairo from Europe, the heat and the humidity are the first surprise. Yes, you know that you are in an African country, and you would expect it to be hotter than Europe. Yet, it is late October; is it possible that it is still so hot? Then, what would August be like here?

It may be just a mistaken impression of someone who has never visited Egypt before, but as you speak with the local people, you discover that it is not just an impression; they share the same sensation. This October is abnormally hot; not the way it used to be. The polls show that Egyptians clearly understand the problem of climate change. Possibly, even better than Europeans, with 92% of Egyptians stating that climate change is already facing their everyday life. The fact that they are used to a hot climate doesn't mean that they don't share the same physical limits of all human being. Life becomes impossible, or at least very hard, once some temperatures are reached. 

So, what are the Egyptians doing? Of course, normal life in the heat of summer is possible only with air conditioning. I haven't been able to find statistics for the diffusion of air conditioning in Egypt, but even buildings that look poor and in bad shape have the external units of AC devices well visible on the outer walls. You see a typical example here, in the island of Zamalek, central Cairo. These are buildings probably built during Nasser's presidency, inspired by Soviet architecture. 

Yet, if you tour Cairo, you won't see a single PV panel roofs. Over several days there, I couldn't detect a single electric car running, and Google Maps tells me that there are only about 20 public recharge stations in Cairo. Not many for a city of more than 20 million inhabitants and some 5 million cars. As you may imagine, in Egypt, everything is based on fossil fuels, and Cairo is one of the most polluted cities in the world. You can hardly find a single tree in the avalanche of concrete that covers everything. 

Clearly, Egypt has serious problems. One is that the population is still exploding and shows little sign of going through the "demographic transition" that will eventually stop its growth. Then, despite its agricultural tradition, Egypt imports about 50% of its grain supply from abroad, mainly from Russia and Ukraine. You see how horrible the situation could easily become in the near future. And the problems are already there. People are not starving in Egypt, but they already have to adapt to a diet that's far from optimal. Because of excess carbohydrates and pollution, Egypt has a serious problem with obesity and with diabetes, that affects nearly 20% of the population. 

So, what can you expect for the future of Egypt, among the problems of mineral depletion and increased warming? Among the positive factors, one is that Egypt does face a problem of water scarcity as most Middle-Eastern countries. Its supply of freshwater does not depend on rain but on the Nile, for its water supply. It is nearly impossible to imagine a climate situation in which the Nile would dry up and, if carefully managed, it can still keep Egypt alive as it has done for thousands of years. 

Then, Egypt is a well-insolated country with excellent possibilities for solar energy production, both on rooftops and in the desertic areas. Up to now, PV plants have been too expensive for Egyptian families, while the government has remained locked to the obsolete fossil fuel paradigm -- just like most governments in the world have been. But things are changing. PV costs are plummeting, while Egypt has a significant fraction of the population that's well educated and sensible to the need for sustainable energy. A good example is the Heliopolis Sustainability University (the "Sekem") where young Egyptians are trained for a sustainable future. During my visit, I noted a remarkable interest in these matters, and it is not too late for Egypt to catch up with the rest of the world and become a renewable energy powerhouse. 

So, the future is uncertain but not necessarily bad for Egypt. It will take courage, good planning, and sacrifices, but, more than all, peace. And there is no doubt that peace is what most Egyptians desire. You have to spend just a few days there to understand that. And we move toward the future, always remembering that God knows best. 

Minimally invasive mining: the birth of the ore-worm

 

Traditional mining is like open-heart surgery: it leaves massive scars and disturbs the surrounding environment. Open pit mining has a large areal footprint, but also underground mining requires a lot of space to dispose waste rock, tailings, and build the aboveground infrastructure. Besides land, it also has direct impacts on water, air and biodiversity. Mining not only disturbs the environment but also the peoples previously living on that land.

Building renewable energy infrastructure to replace the current fossil energy system will require a lot of minerals. Many of their deposits are located under the lands of indigenous and pastoral peoples. Digging them up in the traditional way would have severe consequences on ecosystems and communities. Do local communities and biodiversity really need to be sacrificed to save the world?

 

I think, we can and must avoid this by developing different strategies. First things first, we should minimize the need for mining to start with: We have to question what we really absolutely need for the transition. Many of the critical materials are required for batteries, electrolysers and fuel cells; all technologies for storing energy. Avoiding energy storage by aligning demand with renewable supply (sunflower society), we can avoid having to dig out many of the critical materials. And, we can reengineer the renewable energy equipment for minimal resource requirements. For example, frames for solar panels do need a lot of aluminum, both environmentally and energetically costly, which can be avoided by frameless panels needing a little more of the easier-to-mobilize glass.

However, reducing can only go part of the way; we will still need materials. The technosphere contains large amounts of materials already; some are just lying around (maybe you have an old phone in your drawer?), others are in soon-obsolete fossil infrastructure (e.g. cars, coal powerplants, oil refineries), and again some in luxury items (e.g. yachts, private jets, etc.). Tapping into these existing resources helps to both avoid environmental impacts and build a fairer world. Other materials can be extracted from landfills, mine tailings or past emissions. We will have to take care of our waste anyways, so why not use it for the transition? For example, we will need to remove a lot of carbon from the atmosphere to stabilize the climate, and making mounting systems for solar panels or insulation materials out of it can save lots of resources and generate environmental benefits.

Still, some mining may be inevitable. The necessary renewable infrastructure requires a different composition of materials than currently in use or disposed of in the past. Some of these materials can be found in sufficient quality and quantity only in the ground, for example lithium or neodymium. The question is: How can the absolutely vital materials be extracted with the lowest possible environmental and social consequences?

This brings us back to surgery: avoiding scars and disturbance in neighboring tissue, surgeons developed minimally invasive procedures: a huge success in medicine. Applying this minimally invasive idea to mining, we would need technologies that leave minimal scars in the environment. This could be, for example, an ore-worm: an autonomous, modular, electric, small tunneling machine. It may dig its own access tunnel, leaving only an access hole in the ground and minimal excavated material to be stored somewhere. When reaching the ore body, it crushes, grinds and separates ore concentrate from waste rock, all in-line and underground. It is, so to speak, an online, on-the-spot processing facility. The waste rock could stay in the tunnel; the ore concentrate transported through the access tunnel to further processing and refining outside critical land areas. The ore-worm can perforate the ore body in a way that does not destabilize the formation. And: because it operates autonomously, there is no need for expensive and complex safety equipment for workers protection. Mine water can stay underground. The access path through sensitive land to the mine can be minimal: a powerline to supply electricity, a pipe/conveyor belt for transporting ore concentrate and a road to bring the equipment in and out as well as for maintenance. Further processing can happen outside sensitive areas. Multiple ore-worms can enter through the same access tunnel, increasing mining output without additional damage.

An utopian idea? No, research is going on developing robotic miningmachines, for example in the robominers project. Still, many questions are open: there is need on working out engineering solutions, technological designs, evaluations of environmental and social performances, and ways for financing and investments. Perhaps, other minimal invasive mining procedure can also be conceived, perhaps repurposing knowledge and experience gained in two centuries of coal, oil and gas extraction. To stabilize our climate, the new challenge is to get urgently needed transition materials at minimal environmental and social impacts. Because if we don't have the minerals, we can't make the transition. And that would have unimaginable consequences.