Dense Energy

There is a lot of power in a label. If my friends are “good” and my enemies are “evil”, I have some leverage, as well as emotional satisfaction, in communicating my perspective to others. I am on the side of history and you are not. I am a “good” guy and will certainly go to heaven, but I am not sure where you will be headed.

I see this psychological behavior playing out with “good” renewable energy and “evil” fossil fuels. I have just bypassed any scientific argument over the advantages and disadvantages of different energy sources and gone straight to emotional ones. Never mind the contribution that fossil fuels have played in bringing billions of people out of poverty since the Industrial Revolution, the only significant criteria now is GHG emissions. No credit for past accomplishments. Once labeled “evil” by some group in the community, it is hard to fight back and say you are “less evil” with carbon sequestration or scope 1 & 2 GHG emissions management techniques. Being “less evil” just doesn’t cut it with most people.

But if I can get you to suspend those emotional arguments for a moment (I know that is hard and possibly impossible for many), let me try to argue against a “one (green) size fits all” or the other argument you hear these days that there is only one path to decarbonization and that is the one set by the rich countries in the Global North. One the Global South must follow (with a debate on who pays that bill). Can I convince you with an argument that “some of all of the above” view to the energy transition and maybe even that there are multiple paths to get to the finish line?

What do I mean by that? Maybe plug-in hybrids have a role to the electrification of transportation, rather than just a “good” EV versus a “evil” ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle. Maybe moving from “evil” coal to “slightly less evil” natural gas, or moving from biomass for home cooking and heating in developing countries to “slightly less evil” propane stoves. Maybe the definition of “good” renewables (which according to Dr. Scott Tinker – no energy source really is 100% renewable) can extend to geothermal, nuclear, and even hydrogen (someday)? You can see I am searching for a “radical middle” option (again as Dr. Tinker would say). The global demand for coal is still rising (although not in the Global North). There has to be a reason for that (the answer is it is cheap and available in many places where populations are growing like China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia and some others). I read a quote that stuck with me that some people are choosing survival over the future. Can we blame them? Are they “evil”?

First, we do need some criteria to evaluate each energy source. I propose to use one that I heard from Dr. Scott Tinker from the Switch Energy Alliance and the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology in Austin, Texas. I am a big fan. His criteria are not a bi-polar scale, but a ternary diagram (sorry I am already making this too complicated). But the end points of this criteria are energy affordability and accessibility, energy availability and environmental stewardship (this includes climate change but also air, water, and land quality issues).

Let’s look at the attributes of cost, energy density, sustainability, and equity.

Energy density - Energy density is the amount of energy that can be stored in each system, substance, or region of space. Energy density can be measured in energy per volume or per mass. The higher the energy density of a system or material, the greater the amount of energy it has stored. A material can release energy in four types of reactions. These reactions are nuclear, chemical, electro-chemical and electrical. When calculating the amount of energy in a system most often only useful or extractable energy is measured. In scientific equations, energy density is often denoted by U. https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Energy_density

The clear winner here is nuclear energy. But with our current renewable trend we are quickly moving away from the most-dense energy sources (nuclear and fossil fuels) to the less dense options (wind and solar). This is due to weighting the environmental stewardship criteria as most important. Can we adopt a pathway that tries to navigate solutions (remember all of the above) the ternary diagram or is our scale only linear (between good and evil)?

I know that people like things simple, not complicated. When I bring probability and uncertainly into the discussion, people turn off and walk away. The media only has out attention for 30 seconds at a time so they like simple (also scary – remember the old newspaper editor “if it bleeds, it leads”). Does anyone remember what a newspaper was? Raise you hand if you have heard of Walter Cronkite? I am getting old. We have so many folks trying to get our attention (especially with climate issues) that our attention deficit disorder kicks in and we like simple answers and explanations too.

My work over the last several months on the Energy Transition Talk has exposed me to the complexity behind the energy transition and climate change arguments. I am not a denier but I don’t see simple answers either. We now have renewable energy folks fighting with conservationists over land use and with native Americans over sacred ground.

I have been called “dense” a couple of times in my life but I don’t think it was for a recognition of “good” behavior. So maybe “dense” energy is not a very good label either. Honestly, I don’t have the answer, but I am learning a lot from our guests on the Energy Transition Talk podcast and I am binge watching Dr. Tiner’s Energy Switch broadcasts on PBS. I guess every voice does matter. We are on a short pause in publishing more episodes as my graduate students are taking their semester finals but stay tuned. We have a lot more interesting guests to listen to. Keep an open mind and remember that ternary diagram.