Week 4: A Frame of Reference

The Sun and the Winds are free.  As a species inhabiting the Earth, we have used energy sources for tens of thousands of years, some renewable, and some not.  As we have grown and progressed as a race, so have our energy needs - branching out past a point of sustainability.  

However, we have begun to delve into the alternatives.  We have found ways to begin curbing our addiction to our destructive habits of over consumption.  We have found ways that can begin to give the world time to return what has been destroyed, and recreate that which was taken by man.  Of course I am talking about Alternative Energy.  But not just alternative energy, I am talking about the topic that is in and of itself the greater issue:  Energy economy.  I want to address the current system that exists, and I want to bring attention to one particular means of beginning to solve that problem, which lies in Solar Energy.   

Before we can talk about the solution we need to address a frame of reference that sheds light on the problem itself.  I want to talk about a documentary that really changed my outlook on the world and really hit home the message that Industry and Energy and the Environment are inseparably connected.  Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured landscapes is a documentary about a photographer's trip to China and his investigation into a world of industry, trash, consumption, energy, and everything in between.  Edward Burtynsky tries to remain as objective as possible.  His goal in the documentary is simply to portray the reality of the world as it is - and lets the viewer make their own decisions.  However, he had this to say about environmentalists, "I think the environmental movement has failed in that it’s used the stick too much; it’s used the apocalyptic tone too much; it hasn't sold the positive aspects of being environmentally concerned and trying to pull us out.”  While I think it's a completely fair tactic for environmentalists to use - because it's a real threat, he does make a point.  Environmentalists can't simply say "live better or the world as we know it will end", that's not a good way to motivate people to change their lives.   People don't often respond to negative reinforcement. 

    What Burtynsky offers is an alternative.  His message doesn't carry the tone of an agenda, it doesn't initially scare 'non-believers' off.  He shows them, 'hey, this is what our world does to support your lifestyle'.  He shows pictures and footage of literal mountains and small hills of coal that are waiting to be burned at coal plants.  He shows footage of people whose entire life hood is digging through trash heaps of computer waste to look for gold to melt down and resell.  He shows shipwreckers, people who dismantle old ships for a meager living.  He shows the children taking apart these ships, wading waist deep in oil, disposing of the byproduct of a globalized culture. 


This is our first frame.  This is our starting point.  Burtynsky shows us the grim reality behind a world that we take for granted every day, that we don't even pause to think about.  This is a world that employs hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people, and their industry fuels millions more jobs and markets around the world.  Any aspiring environmentalists needs to understand the world in which we live, and how it works, before we can attempt to create significant change. 

Our second frame dives into the implementation of a solution, not a perfect solution, but perhaps the glimmer of light that you see at the end of a tunnel.  To this we turn to Alternative Energy; solar energy in particular.  On the other side of the world from China and Burtynsky's research, a company in the United States created a major breakthrough in the world of sustainable energy.  A small company created the world's most efficient commercial solar panel ever.  The website Treehugger.com wrote an article on the company NatCore, a company that created a solar panel that is 99.7% efficient.  Why is this important and why am I mentioning this article as a frame of reference?“  One of the ways this matters, said Chuck Provini, the company’s CEO, “is that there isn't a whole lot of difference between the electricity you get on a sunny day vs. a cloudy day. Diffused light won’t matter that much.”  In the world of solar energy, this is huge.  This is two steps forward onto creating a technology that can afford to compete with coal and natural gas. 

You see, the problem with alternative energy is that for the most part, it's just not efficient enough.  And if it is, it's too expensive.  NatCore has just made enormous progress in solving that first problem, and where there is opportunity there is industry.  Such a transition will not be overnight, nor will it happen over the course of a year.  For change to happen, it will have to slowly happen everywhere, branching out from one place and quickly spreading.  Burtynsky's frame of reference not only showed us reality, but he showed us that fossil fuels provide the foundation for millions of people's lives around the world.  Taking that away will cause untold backlashes and unforeseen consequences.  But if we can use NatCore's technology to one day replace mountains of coal with a sea of solar panels, fueling an industry of alternative energy rather than conventional means, then the world will be that much better off. 

Our second frame of reference provided us with an alternative to what we currently have.  But there is a missing piece.  We need to be able to connect the two because as it is, they are not necessarily directly related.  This third frame of reference needs to deal with economics.  Costs, risks and analysis.  Cold hard numbers that support and justify a transition that we know needs to happen, but not how.  The answer lies in the World Future Council, an organization that seeks to answer those very questions.  

The WFC published a document called The Monetary Cost of the Non-Use of Renewable Energies.  When dealing with an industry, the obvious questions are costs, markets, and profits.  But they don't take into account the cost of Not doing something.  It's not necessarily straightforward thinking.  Their study concluded that the annual future usage loss (the loss of money in the future by not using alternative energy) from current oil, gas, and coal consumption ranges between 3.2 and 3.4 Trillion *with a T* USD per year.  

3.2 Trillion dollars per year is a very big frame of reference to work with.  Those are the kinds of numbers that many governments cant even handle, yet these are conservative estimates.  How did the WFC arrive at these numbers?  One of the factors considers first the environmental damages of using fossil fuels, as well as costs incurred by the Lack of fossil fuels available in the future.  In layman's terms, as there becomes less of X, the price of X increases, and this is one of the things the WFC took into account in their study using projected models and existing data trends on the global average and US value of these fossil fuel commodities.  The emphasis here is on the difference in cost between alternative energy (like solar power) and fossil fuels.  One has a high initial cost but carries a low maintenance cost.  The other, fossil fuels, has a lower initial cost, and carries an increasingly more expensive upkeep cost as time increases, eventually becoming economically unsustainable.  

Following this pattern, along with other models, the WFC came to the conclusion that not switching to alternative energies is costing the economy roughly 8-9 billion dollars per day in terms of future costs as well as environmental damages and the value lost in natural resources that cannot be replaced and will not be available in the future.  This is a very powerful economic frame of reference, and no matter which side you stand on the issue of alternative energy, is something that needs to be considered.  

As I said in the beginning of this blog post, the Sun and the Wind are free.  The earth is not.  I have tried to address the problem of fossil fuel use as well as highlighting proposed solutions that address the current status quo, the future of alternative energy, and the economics that link the two.  Compiled together, I think these three articles and perspectives create a unique frame of reference with which to view not just an important issue, but also the bigger picture.  


Links:

Edward Burtynsky:  Manufactured Landscapes
http://www.ted.com/talks/edward_burtynsky_on_manufactured_landscapes.html


NatCore's Black Silicon Solar Cell
http://www.treehugger.com/solar-technology/black-solar-cell-absorbs-997-all-light.html

World Future Council Study
http://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Climate_and_Energy/Cost_of_non_use_of_RE.pdf


Additional Links: (not used in blog post but relevant)
Edward Burtynsky Transcript
http://dotsub.com/view/1436b537-6f4a-4311-8780-f500127621e3/viewTranscript/eng
US Gov Meeting the Challenge of Climate Change at a Reasonable Cost
http://www.state.gov/www/global/oes/fs_climate_costs_980731.html