The “crude” reality of energy

Photo: Manu Arenas

It is great to have so many articles and publications related to miraculous sources of energy populating printed, online and social media. I’m talking about fusion energy, renewable and green energies, 4th generation nuclear energy, and so on.

It’s not that renewable sources of energy are miraculous, of course. But it is miraculous when we believe these renewable energies are abundant, dense, or fast enough to sustain what we have called “The Hydrogen Economy “. Or whatever industrial economy we could think about.

But it is not so great when we are incapable of facing the clear and present data that illustrate the “state of the art” of our energy ecosystem. One of the most up-to-date and reliable sources of information about energy is Enerdata. They keep track of energy consumption and production and publish the numbers every year. Another source of information is Our World In Data.

I’m used to working with the data from Enerdata, but whatever reliable source you prefer should offer similar insights.

The Insights

To make a long story short: after 28 COP events, our world (our economy) keeps depending on non-renewable energy. How much? Well, before jumping to the answer, try to guess a percentage, That is: what percentage of renewable energy do you think is responsible for energizing our civilized world?

Give it a try, and guess.

Well, I’ll move to the answer. For that, I will share a couple of graphics illustrating the breakdown of the type of energy involved in the consumption of energy in the world in 2021. The data comes from Enerdata.

Breakdown by Energy 2021: Biomass 10%, / Coal: 27% / Gas: 24% / Oil: 29% / Electricity: 10%

The second graph illustrates how much electricity comes from renewable energies.

As you can see, electricity generated by renewable sources of energy accounts for only 28%. The rest comes from fossil fuels or nuclear energy.

If we sum up all the data in a single chart, we end up with this:

The world, as of today, is NOT renewable. We are as far from decarbonization as we were a decade ago.

The percentage of renewable energy that moves the “clean and green” world/economy today is an “amazing” 12.8% taking into account the Biomass source of energy. That’s the data.

If we chart the data from Our World In Data, we have this:

We have been fooled: renewables and nuclear energy matter only for generating electricity (except for biomass, which generates heat as a result of its chemical reactions. And electrification of the industry or civil work is not easy at all. If possible or desirable.

We can discuss the “nature” of Nuclear Power: even if we account for nuclear power as renewable, we keep depending on an astonishing 84% figure for fossil fuel to keep moving our world today.

Just think about this: we have been talking about the energy transition for decades. Let’s say we have been talking “seriously” for a decade. And talking “urgently” for 5 years.

The crude reality is we have done nothing at all to effectively reduce the CO2 emissions of our industrial and carbonized economy. Why is that? There are two options (at least):

1. Our leaders don’t take it seriously

2. It is not possible to significantly change the sources of energy that move our industrial economy ( without changing the economy itself)

Houston, we have a problem: the economy

Whatever option we can imagine is problematic. The scientific community is serious about the urgency of reducing CO2 emissions, or else we are going to face serious difficulties to deal with our existence on Earth.

The Economy has become a problem by itself. We have just taken for granted it is the perfect system to rule our existence on Earth. Or have taken for granted it has become so complex, it’s impossible to fix or to change.

For God’s sake! We must take for granted that, if we fall, we are moving toward the Earth, not toward the Moon. That’s a fundamental law: Gravity. But taking for granted the Economy as the perfect ruler for our existence on Earth is naive, pretentious, and dangerous. It’s a conclusion based on incomplete data, based on beliefs instead of science.

Photo: Midjourney

This conclusion has been inferred by people incapable of thinking properly. I’m talking about economists, bureaucrats, politicians, and leaders who know nothing about biology, thermodynamics, physics, or chemical reactions that effectively rule the world we are living in.

The Economy should be the interface between our human civilization and those real Laws we have to comply with to effectively survive as biological entities.

The Economy should have never become “The Law”. Our laws should apply only to our civilization. As soon as our interactions “touch” the Biosphere realm, they should be ruled by Biology, Thermodynamics, Physics, or Chemistry among other disciplines.

Energy is one of the key concepts we must understand, putting in context today’s circumstances. Energy and the Economy are closely related. Energy has become the real currency of the Economy, but the Economy has hidden Energy behind its own currencies.

The so-called “debt” is just the tactic used by the Economy to steal from the Biosphere and take advantage of its delicate balances and equilibrium to maintain its impossible algorithm of constant growth.

We should calculate the energy footprint of every single dollar invested or traded in our financial world, and then, limit the financial operations to fit into the balances and equilibrium that rule the Biosphere and our Biology.

#goingOnIdeas #ideasEnConstruccion

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.