Energy Transition

Bertrand Cassoret

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000344202
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Conservation & Protection
• Index: Biological Sciences

This book presents both the importance of energy transition and its associated difficulties. Energy Transition, Second Edition, provides an explanation of the physical concepts of energy and power and also reviews global energy consumption and our dependence on energy.

The book discusses the links between the economy and energy. It explains the drawbacks and dangers of different energy sources and tries to compare them. By reviewing future energy resources, it evaluates several transition scenarios.

The book shows that the laws of physics prevent the emergence of simple, pleasant solutions, but it proposes potential solutions and encourages readers to develop better processes from energy sources to production to consumption.

This book will be of interest to engineers and undergraduate and graduate students studying and working in various fields of energy; producers of fossil, gas, oil, coal, electric, renewable, and nuclear energy; and anyone interested in better understanding these fundamental problems for our future.

FEATURES

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• Discusses the current issues with energy transition

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• Covers several energy transition scenarios and their associated difficulties

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• Presents the links between economy and energy

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• Highlights the importance of a global discussion of energy

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• Encourages the development of better, improved processes in energy sources from production to consumption

1 What Is Energy?

The concept of energy is not that simple to approach. Energy is not always visible or palpable. It is hard to quantify. It is not necessarily material, and its existence may even be ignored. Yet, energy is indispensable to life. It is omnipresent in our activities and influences them considerably.

1.1 Energy in Rich Countries’ Daily Life

At night, ventilation devices, internet boxes, freezers, refrigerators, alarm clocks, chargers and various electrical devices left on stand-by consume energy permanently. In the morning, electrical power supplies light. Energy, mostly gas, is required to heat up homes.

Preparing breakfast or other meals requires the consumption of energy: coffee makers, toasters, ovens, microwaves, hotplates, dishwashers, etc.

What about the bathroom? We would not wash so often without abundant energy. You need some to pump water up the water tower, to heat it up and more to make soap.

To listen to the radio, we use electrical appliances which receive waves from electrical emitters, relaying the programmes made in studios which are inconceivable without electrical power. Of course, it is the same with television.

Telephones are charged with electricity. E-mails and internet data are stored on IT servers which are greedy for electricity.

To go to work, most of us need petrol for our cars or electricity for public transport.

In almost all workplaces, there are computers, lighting, heating, ventilation, various electrical appliances and even machines and vehicles running on petroleum or gas.

Anything we buy requires energy to be produced. For any of the things around us, base ores had to be mined – generally with the use of oil-fuelled machines – and transported. Coal, gas, oil and electricity are used to run the transformation and manufacturing factories, and then, all these products have to be transported too.

Anything we eat requires energy. Food is the energy provided to living creatures, but let us not forget about the fuel required by agricultural machinery, the fabrication of fertilizers, the running of food-processing factories, transport systems, etc. We would not eat the same food if fields were ploughed using animal power, if there were no available energy to preserve food or transport it.

Our clothes are often manufactured from oil in energy-greedy factories, and they often have to be transported from thousands of miles away on oil-fuelled ships.

Of course, all the shops from which we purchase these goods also consume energy for their lighting, heating, ventilation, IT equipment, handling and associated offices. And a lot of energy was required to build them to start with.

At the other end of the chain, energy is also required to carry our litter, recycle glass, bury the final waste, depollute water, etc.

Our homes would not be what they are if their foundations had to be dug out by hand rather than with an oil-fuelled excavator, if the building materials had to be transported on muleback rather than on an oil-fuelled truck, if the roof timbers had to be built by hand rather than in energy-greedy factories, if there had not been kilns to fire the bricks.

We are lucky to get healthcare when necessary. Prescribed medicines, corrective lenses, dental prostheses, etc., are easily made available thanks to energy-hungry machines and transport systems. Hospitals, which consume a lot of energy, are there for us in case of more serious health issues: ventilation, lighting, heating, cleaning, disinfection processes, refrigeration, medical equipment of all sorts, operating theatres, etc., are not run on thin air.

Many of us have leisure activities. We would not go to the swimming pool so often if the water was not heated. Bikes, sport shoes, rackets, balls, work-out equipment, etc., are all made thanks to some energy. We even frequently use our car to go and do some sport. Cinemas, concert halls, gyms and museums also consume energy for their ventilation, lighting, heating, etc. Sport events and shows would be unimaginable without a lot of energy. We need some for the construction of stadiums and halls, their heating, lighting and ventilation, to transport their equipment, to bring players and artists, to take the public to events, to carry out the promotion of events. Even the Tour de France, though a bicycle race, is a big oil consumer, given the number of follower vehicles.

Many of us go on holiday, but rarely by bicycle. The energy required to build blocks of flats, villas, hotels, restaurants, casinos, seawalls, amusement parks, ski lifts, sport centres, museums was considerable. Huge amounts of energy are required for the running of all these installations, and to clean beaches, to operate carousels, cable cars, ships or rescue helicopters, etc.

Some people travel by train, which is less energy-greedy than cars, but railways are still very big electrical power consumers. Airplanes are big oil consumers. Of course, the manufacturing of those means of transport is a high energy-consuming process, particularly for the production of steel.

Many people are careful with their consumption of energy: they use low-energy bulbs, they drive more calmly or even walk, they switch off devices instead of keeping them on stand-by, they carefully adjust heating settings. But all that does not account for much, compared to the rest.

Other people, scarce as they may be, and often belonging to the less well-off, behave more virtuously: no car, no holidays, no telephone, etc. Their consumption is slightly lower, but they are still very dependent on energy to move around – even when using public transport – to cook their food, use hot water, live in their own home, get healthcare, etc.

Three-quarters of French wage-earners work for service industries and are paid for managing finance, administering, providing healthcare or assistance, communicating, teaching, doing research, selling, organizing, developing products, etc. Goods and properties are more and more abundant while there are fewer and fewer people to manufacture them. Food is abundant while less than 3% of the working population work in the agriculture sector. And all this would just not work without high energy-consuming machines, factories or transport systems. The organization of society relies entirely on abundant energy. The only people living with really low energy consumption are those in poor countries who eat what they grow, live in rudimentary housing, get little healthcare, do not travel much and have limited access to culture and leisure. Their lifestyle, which they generally endeavour to improve, is similar to the one the French used to have at the beginning of the 19th century.

1.2 The Laws of Physics

Energy is what is used to transform our environment, to create movement, radiation, electrical currents, chemical reactions, to produce heat along with every process. Energy is therefore required to move a mass or to deform it, to supply light or create electromagnetic waves, to operate our numerous electrical appliances, to create the chemical processes that are essential to life, to keep us warm.

Photosynthesis, for example, is a chemical reaction through which plants transform solar energy into an organic matter containing nutritional calories. Our muscles can then transform that energy into movements that can operate pedals driving a dynamo producing electricity to generate light and heat.

Two fundamental laws are permanently true in the field of energy, until proven otherwise:

• Energy conservation: “I believe in life after death, just because energy cannot die. It travels, transforms, but never stands still”, Albert Einstein is said to have declared.
  The amount of energy that is put out by a system is equal to the amount put into it. Thus, energy can only be transformed but not be created. Energy cannot appear miraculously! For example: a power station, which transforms gas into electricity, will give back exactly the same amount of electrical energy and heat as the energy it has consumed in the form of gas. Heat results from inevitable losses. The amount of usable energy put out as electricity is thus necessarily lower than that put in, in the form of gas.
  Solar energy is another example: the sun sends a certain amount of energy over a one-square-metre surface area, each year – about 1,300 kWh in France. It is therefore impossible to extract more than that from a solar panel, no matter how sophisticated it may be.
• Increases in entropy: The quality of energy always degrades itself from the concentrated to the dispersed, from order to disorder. A power station using gas – concentrated energy – transforms part of it into heat, which will disperse. It creates electricity, which will also turn into heat in the course of its distribution, and will then disperse: electric wires will slightly heat up, and so will electric appliances. Even a fan, which is meant to cool people, will also create some friction resulting in heat, which will disperse in the atmosphere and eventually vanish into space. A fan consumes energy, thus increasing the temperature of the room where it is installed, even if you can feel the coolness of its air flow. Another example: a motor-car transforms the energy stored in its petrol tank into heat – the engine gets hot – and into movement, which is what it is meant to produce, but movement creates friction, particularly the friction of the car body travelling through the air, which eventually results in heat.
  In the solar system, energy is mainly concentrated in the sun and disperses permanently. The energy consumed always transforms into heat, which disperses.

So, two systems consuming the same amount of energy will heat up equally. A refrigerator, which is meant to produce coolness, gets as warm as any appliance consuming the same amount of energy (its rear plate gets warm). Ten TV-sets consuming 100 watts each get collectively as warm as a radiator consuming 1,000 watts. A top-range radiator is sometimes thought to consume less electricity than a cheaper one. It is only partially true. The distribution of heat, as well as the diffusion mode, have an influence on comfort but two radiators consuming the same amount of energy produce exactly the same amount of heat.

1.3 Where Does Energy Come from?

A huge amount of energy has been present across the universe since its origin. Where does it come from? This is a vast question to which I would not claim to have an answer. Energy is present in two forms: the nuclear energy contained in any matter, and the kinetic energy of the movement of stars or of other particles moving through space.

Figure 1.1 is meant to summarize all this, though not comprehensively.

FIGURE 1.1 Origin of ...