Key Technologies Needed to End Global Warming
The world community is on the way to inflict lasting and irreversible damages to our growing and prosperous world economies! The continuing profligate burning of fossil fuels is raising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Global warming and climate change are caused by the accelerating accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Most of the greenhouse gases are produced by the quickening burning of fossil fuels. We must stop fossil fuel combustion soon or the world will be harmed severely and irreversibly. What must be done to stop the lunacy?
Science and advanced technologies have contributed to lead us into our present predicament. Fortunately, science and technology have the power to save the world’s economies from collapsing.
The world community must realize soon that extreme measures are needed to prevent our present race towards the abyss of worldwide economic collapse. This statement is not an exaggeration. The world depends critically on the steady supply of affordable and plentiful liquid fuels. If this supply is ever interrupted, cut off, or curtailed severely, transportation of commodities, foods, goods, and people will stop. Economies will quickly begin to react with recessions, depressions, and collapse. Past experience tells us that a reversal from economic depressions is difficult under benign conditions. A world without sufficient liquid fuels will almost certainly have lost the resources to revive its economies.
The world does not have too many options to replace fossil fuels and, worse yet, the implementation of the few available options will take decades. The world must deal with two major issues. We must switch from using fossil fuels to exclusively consuming renewable energies. Before we can make the change, we must replace fossil fuels with renewable and alternate energy sources. This changeover will be hard fought by the establishment, will require the development of several new industrial technologies, and will bring with it hardships. Hardships will minor and temporary if rational minds prevail. The benefits of this changeover will promote economic growth, will last for centuries, and will save our world and our economies for our grandchildren and their offspring.
What are those technologies that we need to develop and what must be done?
Before we can stop all fossil fuel burning, we must prepare technologies that are capable of supplying us with a continuous supply of electricity, liquid fuels, and heating gases. The supply of each of these three energy forms must be affordable, plentiful, and secure!
Our economies depend almost exclusively on these three energy forms. Electricity has become the predominant energy for stationary energy applications. Industry, commerce, buildings, and homes use electricity in thousands of applications. Electricity provides light, heat, and mechanical energy and powers communications. Modern production of goods is unthinkable without electric power.
Liquid motor fuels are equally important and we are continuously reminded of their critical role whenever we have to fill up our cars. Prices at the pump have been increasing steadily and have been reacting to a wide array of economical and political developments. The plentiful supply of liquid fuels is by no means secure and the threat of future price increases and motor fuel shortages has become a constant worry.
Supplies of natural gas and other processing gases have been getting less attention than petroleum but prices experienced major upswings, too.
Virtually all these three energy forms were supplied in the past by fossil fuels. Only nuclear power and hydroelectric power played a supportive role in electricity generation.
The continuous burning of fossil fuels in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas has been the leading cause for the continuous accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the most predominant gas in the category of so-called greenhouse gases. Common to this type of gases is their ability to absorb and emit thermal radiation from the Sun and to retard cooling of the Earth. The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased over the last century by close to 40 %. The most realistic forecasts put the carbon dioxide concentration in the year 2050 well above the 500 ppm level. This compares to a figure of 280 ppm in 1900!
The results of this steep increase are in line with
expectations; the average temperature across the Earth is increasing and will
exceed its long-term average temperatures by 4 degrees Celsius in 2050! Other forecasts still predict a lower
increase. However, these earlier
predictions did not yet take into the account the steep acceleration of fossil
fuel consumption in
The world community does not have a choice any longer. We must confront reality and must stop all fossil fuel burning. Such a total changeover from the near exclusive use of fossil fuels to the complete cessation of all fossil fuel burning will last several decades to complete. Dependent on the degree of cooperation between the world’s major powers, it will take at least thirty years and it may last more than fifty years before a complete changeover from our present energy supply system to a fossil fuel free future energy system can be realized.
At present, the forces demanding change are still disorganized. Soon, the feedback from global warming will become more obvious, more destructive, and more oppressive. Signs of climate change will be observed everywhere and steeply increasing damages will vitalize the call for action.
What must be done? What can be done? Fortunately, the world is not entirely helpless. Many technologies have been identified that can be used to supply renewable energy in considerable quantities. However, the overall technology mix is still not sufficient by far and cannot yet support a complete changeover to renewable and alternate energy sources.
Renewable and alternate energy sources were used in the past and will find increasing applications in the form of hydropower, nuclear power, and geothermal power. Solar panels for the direct production of electricity from sun radiation and windmills converting wind energy into electricity will be used increasingly.
For fossil-fuel-free electricity production, we still need to develop four technologies. We must develop nuclear reactors that can be built in three or four standardized sizes and that can operate on nuclear fuel with lower uranium concentration levels. The unavoidable proliferation of nuclear power plants all over the globe will present the world community with an increased threat of nuclear terrorism. This threat must be addressed and must be eliminated as much as possible.
We must develop energy storage devices that can store the interruptible energy production from solar panels and from windmills. Preferably, we will develop energy storage devices, which can be directly connected to solar electricity plantations, wind farms, single windmills, and solar panel installations on buildings. Such distributed energy storage devices will substantially reduce additional stresses on already overloaded transmission nets and will instead facilitate the operation of nuclear and hydro powered devices at base capacity. A wide variety of storage concepts is available, but has not yet attracted the attention of developers and investors.
Hydrogen production for temporary energy storage and for industrial processing can be used in industrial settings where trained personnel are available. Safety issues, low energy density, and exceptionally high distribution costs make hydrogen unacceptable for everyday use in day-to-day traffic situations. Categorically, compressed hydrogen is not suited for providing energy for automobiles, trucks, ships, and airplanes.
Therefore, liquid motor fuels, refined from petroleum, must be replaced by another energy source. At present, the only visible alternative is the conversion of bioenergy into liquid motor fuels. Ethanol is being produced but its energy yield from one acre or one hectare of arable land is by far too small. Ethanol will never become a liquid fuel substitute.
Instead, we must breed plant varieties that have much higher energy yields and we must develop conversion processes with higher energy efficiencies. Some algae already have the desirable biomass properties. Gasification, flash pyrolysis, solvolysis, and very high pressure hydrogenation at elevated temperatures are some such more promising bioenergy conversion technologies.
Producing petroleum substitutes from biomass and refining them into standard liquid motor fuels has huge economic advantages. Consumers can continue to drive the cars they love. Oil refineries can continue to produce gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. This means that the world’s irreplaceable inventory of transportation equipment can still be used, airplanes can fly and land on existing airports, and liquid fuels will be available all over the world. The huge amounts of money we saved by preserving equipment, plants, and distribution systems, we can invest in changing our fossil fuel powered economies into more prosperous economies, which can count on stabile energy prices.
Most importantly, these newly emerging energy technologies will not emit any greenhouse gases. Global warming will end and climate changes will slowly subside. The world can enter a new epoch in its development. Humanity may be able to live for centuries in a peaceful environment with prosperous economies, stable ecologies, and increasing wealth for all.
