Session 8: Energy & World Change

Brief Overview/ Introduction

This week’s session was on energy and world change, and it mainly revolved round the issue of rising energy consumption and the pressing need for sustainable energy sources for the future generation.

As a starter Prof showed us a quote which was shown previously in earlier sessions which said that if everyone were to consume as much energy as the average Singaporean or American president, the world’s oil reserves will be depleted within 9 years. Global energy consumption levels have been increasing drastically these few years, and as global population is estimated to 9.07billion by 2050, energy levels are only going to shoot up even more drastically. This is an extremely worrying problem when the world’s energy resources, oil and fossil fuels, is fast thinning out…and not going to be renewed anytime soon.

Economic development is key to eradicating poverty and hunger, and other problems that less affluent nations are faced with. Unfortunately, economic development goes hand-in-hand with energy consumption. As countries become more developed, their energy consumption levels will increase too, and at a much faster rate than economic progress.

As such, there is a need for us to redouble our efforts and investment in finding alternative energy sources, as well as continue our and find ways to generate and adopt alternative energy sources, and fast.

Interesting Observations & Ideas:

One of the key considerations in the goal of generating alternative energy sources is making these alternatives available to the less affluent people too. It is interesting to know that poorer people are already living in a much more sustainable manner tan affluent people. Not being able to afford the rising oil and fuel prices, less wealthy families have already resorted to other sources of energy that are far less wasteful and much more inexpensive., such as biomass stoves and solar fridges. A prime example is Brazil, due to its lack of petroleum resources, the country was driven to find alternative solutions. The Brazilians turned to what they knew best- agriculture, and found a way to use ethanol as energy through harvesting the alcohol produced from sugar cane production. Presently, there are no longer any light vehicles running on gasoline in Brazil, ever since the government mandated blending the green ethanol with gasoline in 1976. As such, Brazil become the world’s first sustainable biofuels economy and industry leader, acting as a policy model for other countries way since an estimated 40 years ago.

Another interesting observation made was that biomass was actually invented long ago, but the richer people eventually got distracted and obsessed with fossil fuels. I remembered coming across something way back on Biochar. Biochar is a type of charcoal created through pyrolysis of biomass, and is currently under research, having the potential to cut carbon emissions and contributed to sustainable sources of energy. This energy efficient resources was actually used long ago by pre-Columbian Amazonians as a soil enhancer, by smouldering agricultural waste (biomass) with soil in trenches. Sustainable use of biocharring could potentially reduce global CO2 emissions, as biochar is able to trap carbon in the soil for thousands of years like coal. As such, it is an extremely promising sustainable energy resource, withdrawing CO₂ from the atmosphere at the same time.

It was also surprising to find out that we have been pursuing the wrong approach, by focusing on biomass. It turns out that solar energy or photovoltaic is a better alternative in the long run, as it is much more efficient than biofuels, and provides many times more energy than a single unit of biomass. In fact, there are some concerns regarding adopting biomass as a widespread energy alternative, as crops like corn and usgar cane that are sources for biomass production require land that should be used for growing food and tackling the issue of food security. Algae helps avoid this problem, but yet again it requires land space. Solar energy not only generates more energy, it is free from all these encumbrances, as it doesn’t require land space as it can be capture from existing rooftops, and it doesn’t emit any carbon and contribute to the growing problem of greenhouse gases as it produces power. Wind and hydropower are good alternative sources of energy as well, both proving more energy and are more efficient than biomass. I was also rather surprised to find that although China is one of the largest coal and oil consuming countries in the world, it has spent large amounts of investment in researching on solar energy.

The current driving force for innovation on alternative energy sources is cost. Fossil fuel is not only wasteful but very costly as they consume large amounts of resources quickly. In comparison, energy-efficient devices require far less resources while producing the same amount, if not more, of energy. Hence, eco-friendly and energy-saving technologies are able to save large amounts of money in the long term, and its cost-saving potential is the factor that drives companies to develop more energy-saving technologies.

Key takeaway points:

I feel that it is important for us to widen our perspectives and plan for the long term. Although energy-saving technologies have a higher initial market price than conventional fossil-fuel powered devices, they provide significant cost-savings in the future. Likewise, although biomass is a good eco alternative to fossil fuels, the truth is that we are consuming at a much faster rate than we can develop biofuels. We should therefore reconsider our action plan and focus, concentrating on other energy sources that require far less effort to produce and can be readily available to everyone in the world, such as solar, wind, and hydro energy.

Session Rating:  8.5/10 Before this week’s session, I have never really paid much interest in biofuels and the need for alternative energy sources, so the session was a real eye-opener.