Garry Golden

“…somehow I know that only when it is dark enough - can you see the stars….”
Dr. Martin Luther King – I’ve Been to the Mountaintop (Full audio)

If we are to have a vision for the future of energy – it should be global abundance – not American ‘independence from foreign oil’. American ‘independence’ does little to stop the carbon emissions from burning coal in China- where demand for electricity is three times greater than oil. ‘Independence’ and isolationist policies do little to address deeper socio-political problems within non-democratic oil rich regions.

Self-sufficiency for America does nothing to address the explosive demand for energy around the world- which is expected to double in the next twenty five years. Instead of turning inward we might innovate around a vision of a global energy industry capable of leveraging one of the great economic opportunities of the next century— Powering every individual and object on the planet!

Why stress abundance? - to counter the current tone of cynicism, pessimism and fear of our ability to meet a stark reality - global demand for energy will double in the next twenty five years. The ‘brutal facts’ are that most of this growth will be in non-western (OECD) countries such as India and China, and that most of this growth will be from hydrocarbon based energy.

The good news is that energy consumption has a direct linear relationship to GDP growth. An expected doubling of energy means that we are entering an era of global economic expansion much larger than anything we have seen in the past century.

We do not yet know which nations will provide new energy resources and related science/engineering knowledge to the world? But America has choices. We can talk of ‘independence’ and try to ‘free ourselves from oil’. Or we can see the opportunity of global integration– and help to power the planet. We can continue to fear climate change- or we can create an atmosphere of hope around nanoscale science and engineering that can open a clear path towards clean abundant energy.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model which makes the existing model obsolete.”
- Buckminster Fuller -

What are the elements of abundance….? Unification. Decentralization. Personalization.

Unification - Electric Vehicles & the H2-Electron Economy

The first step towards abundance is to unify all industries around electron based energy.

In the world of energy there are primary inputs– oil, coal, wind, solar, nuclear, etc. There are energy conversion methods such as combustion vs. electrochemical. And then there are energy carriers – electricity and hydrogen. Even with tremendous growth in renewable energy inputs the most likely scenario is that hydrocarbons will account for 70-80% of our primary energy needs by 2030. It is also likely that the combustion of coal and oil will remain the primary means to convert energy.

[A complete transition to ‘renewable’ forms of energy is a worthy goal but one that will take decades to achieve. I fully support renewable energy. But if climate change is real - then the ‘greenest’ thing we could do is to turn our eyes towards cleaning up hydrocarbons. This means ending the era of ‘combustion’ and moving towards other forms of energy conversion (e.g. electrochemical for natural gas, gasification of coal, biologically driven conversion)]

The most valuable form of energy in our world is not coal or wind – it is electricity. Electricity, not oil, powers the modern world. Most objects in our homes, factories and offices are powered by electrons. Electricity is the foundation of the global knowledge economy.

Only the transportation sector remains outside of the domain of electricity. The problem is not our dependency on oil – but on our reliance to the internal combustion engine. The combustion engine is an inefficient, bulky mechanical system that prevents the auto industry from having leaner manufacturing supply chains, less excess inventory and revolutionary vehicle design.

Today’s mechanical engines – explode liquid hydrocarbons. Electrons are useless (1). Solar, wind and nuclear cannot compete against oil as long as the vehicle remains outside the realm of electricity. The first step towards abundance is to end the era of the combustion engine – and unify all industries around electron based energy. This does not end our reliance on oil – but it allows us to finally use other primary inputs to power our transportation industry. It is a critical first step. Hybrids and ethanol only extend the era of oil by fixing the problems of an old platform (combustion engine) instead of building a new industry!

The future platform for vehicles is the all-electric motor. This electric chassis will likely be powered by a combination of batteries, capacitors and fuel cells. The primary inputs to produce electrons will be both hydrocarbon and renewable. Electric vehicles are important to the industry because it provides a leaner platform for vehicle design and steady flow of electricity for in-vehicle ‘telematic’ systems. (It has nothing to do with miles per gallon or ‘green’ energy. Electric cars are about making more money…!!)

Note: Electron energy carriers… electricity and hydrogen

Electricity is the negative flow of electrons. Hydrogen consists of two negative and two positive charges. Hydrogen converted through a fuel cell produces electricity. Even when we talk of a ‘hydrogen’ economy we are speaking of a world powered by electrons.

Whether that carrier is produced by a wind, coal, natural gas or nuclear – is a different conversation! But we must first recognize that the world is unified around one form of energy – the electron.

Decentralization – Electrons from Streams or Packets…?
The foundation of abundance is the decentralization of production, storage and delivery!

In the developed world we receive ‘streams’ of electricity through wall sockets fed by transmission lines connected to central power plants. If the line is disrupted we lose access to power. If collective grid demand for electricity rises throughout the day – we pay a premium. These power disruptions and price fluctuations cost American consumers and industries billions of dollars each year. While oil receives most of our media attention – our aging electricity grid system remains our greatest future liability. Meanwhile the prospect of building these centralized grids in developing countries remains a daunting task.

This ‘stream’ system cannot produce global abundance of energy because of high capital costs for developing infrastructure and the inability to store energy locally. It is either flowing or not flowing. Electrons can be stored in several ways – in solid state capacitors, chemically in batteries or hydrogen, or mechanically through concepts such as fly wheels. (Each electron format has its own camp of advocates. I prefer hydrogen fuel cells because of key reasons which I will outline in another post!)

Decentralizing storage and production - Adding ‘packets to the stream’
I wrote about the consumer market importance of ‘packets’ in the ‘Can Walmart beat Big Oil’ post. This post looks at piggy-backing energy distribution through retail shelf channels (rather than transmission lines). So I’ll skip making that case here… and look at the market advantages of decentralization.

• Local Storage
  Storing electrons at the end point of use helps customers leverage peak price fluctuations - and avoid interruption of service. There is nothing ‘green’ to it… it’s pure market driven behavior that could save billions of dollars annually.

[Again, electrons can be storage in capacitors, batteries or as hydrogen. (… the storage of hydrogen is often held up as the biggest barrier to its market success. I believe the momentum is clearly shifted towards solid state storage through chemical bonds (hydrides) or physical adsorption (e.g. metal organic frameworks).]

• Local Production – Natural Gas & Fuel cells
  Electricity is currently produced at large central power plants – mostly supplied by coal or natural gas. But what if we could use home/factory based fuel cells to convert natural gas into electricity (or H2 fuel for vehicles) for less money than in these large centralized power plants? That is a disruptive idea!

• Remote Production - Renewables
  One of the major barriers to solar and wind energy is the cost associated with connecting turbine and solar farms to central transmission lines. Industrial sized energy appliances can help to bring remote solar, wind and wave power farms online without the high capital costs of connecting to transmission lines. Remote wind farms in the Dakotas or in the middle of the ocean could convert kinetic energy – into hydrogen stored in solid blocks that are loaded onto rail, trucks or ships to grid connected substations. The density of electrochemical energy potential in these blocks of hydrogen could be infinitely more potent than a barrel of combustible oil. Note: Centralized power plants are not going away anytime soon. But I believe they are an architecture limited to hydrocarbon/nuclear based fuel inputs which are ‘fed’ into the power plant. Wind, solar and wave power is not ‘fed’ into turbines. Energy is collected and captured over much greater physical spaces – making centralization difficult. Decentralizing the storage and production of electrons would do wonders for renewable inputs!

Personalization
We have no real relationship with energy. Most of us do not know where our energy comes from. We do not know the science of energy. We only follow the headline version of the politics of energy – choosing to stay away from the complexities of changing an entire industry.

I believe it is time to frame energy in a way that becomes more of a personal issue rather than a ‘national’ issue. There are several layers (.. bare with me—this is a work in progress!!)

Step One- Focus on Packets, not Streams
The first step is supporting the idea that we must bring electricity to individuals and objects – not to wall sockets. We must forget about ‘powering’ homes – and focus on powering individuals. We must make energy portable enough so that every individual on the planet has access to some form of electricity even in the absence of major infrastructure. We should give serious consideration to the idea of retail distribution of electrons- and the potential disruption of micro-power systems in unplugging all objects from the grid.

Step Two – Make our energy systems transparent
The second layer is adding transparency to increase energy literacy. Where was the energy produced? What was the primary input? How was it converted? How much carbon was produced- or saved? (Doing this as a stream might be impossible given the energy trading industry. But in the form of packets—we could add such a layer of information)

Step Three- Personal Energy Management Systems
We assume that the stream of electricity will always be there… hence we do not care to manage the system effectively. Abundance requires conservation. It demands that we do not use energy unless it is needed. There is a growing field of software driven energy management systems. (I’m only at the beginning of understanding this industry- so I’ll leave it here for now…) But briefly, breaking away from the ‘stream’ – we enter an age of object based power. In this system the object will be designed to actively maximize energy efficiency (rather than just passively receive an ‘electron stream’).
Enabling technologies include RFIDs, Zigbee, wireless networks, MEMS, etc. But rather than dig myself into a whole… I’ll come back to this idea later!

How do we achieve abundance?
The ‘how’ part of abundance is the subject of future posts. While it has become fashionable to be a skeptic of our future ability to meet global energy demand, I remain quite optimistic.

Nanoscale science and engineering is already reducing costs of energy related components including catalytic membranes, high surface area materials, imaging technologies, wireless networks, solid state lighting, etc.

Biology – I believe ‘biology’ will drive the next era of energy production (building on top of the eras of combustion, kinetic, electromagnetism, nuclear). Commercially viable solutions to electron-based energy might be found in the genes and proteins of microorganisms that have developed over billions of years. The emerging field of ‘synthetic biology’ will be important to meeting future global demand for energy.

….more to come… Garry