Complex problems can usually be stripped back to “core problems,” and the “problem simplification” approach holds true with energy.
Looking at energy today, there is a complex web of interwoven issues: production, storgae, transmission, consumption, efficiency, conservation, etc. At the core, there are six primary uses uses of energy:
1. Lighting: From the candles of antiquity to the LED of the modern world, energy has carried the human species out of darkness.
2. Climate: From campfires to air conditioners, energy climatizes the world for comfortable human habitation.
3. Food: From cooking pots to an electric refrigerator, energy is widely consumed for safe food storage and preparation.
4. Production: From the ox driven hoe to the robotic assembly line, energy helps humanity produce more with less effort.
5. Transportation: From the sled to the sports car, energy fuels movement around the planet and beyond.
6. Information: Most recently, from printed books to enlightened digits, energy is the backbone to an emerging information age.
When you look at the component “core problems” of energy and try to solve them directly, the daunting challenges of energy seem to go away. Let’s start with a highly inefficient category: lighting.
I am going to burn coal that has taken millions of years to form, heat some water, spin a turbine, vent excess heat into a river, create a magnetic field, electrify some metal, convert the electricity to a low voltage, send it over long wires for 60 miles, convert it back to a higher voltage, channel it through increasingly smaller wires, and then use the remaining energy to power a very small fire in a vacuum tube on my wall. Huh?
The modern day “solution” for lighting is completely counter-intuitive, unsustainable, and illogical. A more intelligent design would be lighting based on a chemical or biological process involving phosphorescence. For example, imagine a bright burning microbe that biodegraded waste products to produce light. Just a thought…
The purpose of this post is to say that solving the root problems intelligently, one-by-one will solve the many complexities of energy.
It’s funny how great innovations seem so simple AFTER the fact. Hindsight is indeed 20×20. However, new (or more broadly shared) innovation, new materials, and newer understanding of how these things come together is what makes for a brilliant future.
Take the greatest single source of energy ‘on’ Earth: our star Sol; the Sun.
It’s been there, right before our eyes since the dawn of life. Yet we started backwards, by burning fuel grown naturally in temperate sunlight.
Now we can take advantage of solar power through Photovoltaic or Sterling power capturing devices; wind turbines to harness daily changing temperatures (also caused by the Earth turning under that same Sun), wave & gravity powered water turbines (in estuarys & dams), recycling to reclaim used materials &energy, and even nuclear generators mimicing the solar process.
It all comes down to basic research, creative engineering technology applications, useful results, and most importantly: sharing that knowledge & power for the greater good of everyone.
Application of those innovations is both the final part of the process, and the first step forward into the future.
We already have many of the puzzle pieces available online, and the people with the required skills ready & waiting out here to begin to make it all happen.
Let’s find a way to take those steps in concrete actions.