-
Asked by anon-251974 on 4 May 2020.
Question: What do you think is the future of clean and sustainabe energy?
- Keywords:
-
Susan Cartwright answered on 4 May 2020:
Clean and sustainable energy, in the broadest sense, is essential to our future: if we are to combat climate change it is essential that we wean ourselves off fossil fuels as soon as possible. I think the principal problem at the moment is the need for better energy storage: a common problem with renewable energy is that you can’t turn it on and off on demand. This is a problem if renewable energy is to replace fossil fuels completely – at the moment, when there are sudden surges in demand (the classic example is half-time in a World Cup match involving England, when everyone rushes off to put the kettle on), the response is to turn on gas-fired power stations, which can come up to full power very quickly. The only “green” power source that can do this is hydroelectric, and expanding hydroelectric capacity is not straightforward (it takes a long time to build a dam) and has environmental costs (flooding river valleys in mountainous regions). Solar power in the UK is especially bad in this respect: we get most solar power in summer daytimes, but we need most power in winter nights (places like California, which use more power on air conditioning than on heating, have a much better match of domestic demand to solar supply!).
So, in short, I do think that it is essential to expand the use of clean and sustainable energy, but we need to solve the energy storage problem to achieve the goal of getting rid of fossil fuels altogether.
-
Ry Cutter answered on 4 May 2020: last edited 4 May 2020 8:57 am
In addition to Susan’s answer. Depending on your use of the word, ‘clean’ can mean many things. One technology we are particularly familiar with is nuclear power. This has been shown to be a sustainable, safe, and greenhouse emission free way to meet energy demands. This may be a good stop gap between more renewable energy sources like wind, hydroelectric, and solar.
–
We’re at the point where immediate action needs to be taken to save the climate, and there is not enough funding going to research to improve or develop new renewable energy sources. Which means nuclear may be our best option while we improve the technologies mentioned above.
–
Furthermore, we’re making a lot of progress with electric cars! My optimistic estimate is that we will all be driving electric cars in about 50 years! I hope it’s earlier, but the human race doesn’t seem to enjoy change 😛
–
Great Question,
Ry -
James Smallcombe answered on 4 May 2020:
I still support the dream of fusion power, but the technology make it usable and truly sustainable are still out of reach. We have seen big improvements in the efficiency of solar power which I think will continue. Because many renewables need you to store the energy we will need to start investing in the next generation of energy storage, mostly “mechanical batteries”. There are lots of proposed ways to do this. Currently we mostly pump water uphill, storing the energy as gravitational potential. I’ve seen new developments that plan to use compressed air (stored underwater for higher pressure and greater energy density), and even one idea that just involved lifting very heavy concrete blocks. The path we choose will depend on cost, reliability and how efficiently we can convert energy from electrical to mechanical potential in each case.
-
Paula Koelemeijer answered on 4 May 2020:
As Susan mentioned, this is not an easy problem to solve, and particularly, energy storage is an issue. It is also a complex problem because different people have so many different interests in it, and it requires expertise from a wide range of sciences to work together: engineers, physicists, geologists, atmospheric scientists. Perhaps the most difficult of all, to solve this in the long term, we also need to change our own behaviour and attitude, and do our own bit – reduce our energy consumption and help to build a more sustainable future.
-
Richard Fielder answered on 4 May 2020:
In addition to what others have said, the big thing about clean energy is that it will require a mix of many different things, and that mix will be very different in different places. There really isn’t any single solution that will work for everyone in every situation. Hydroelectric has been mentioned, which works well in places that have plenty of mountains and water, but isn’t available everywhere. Some places like Iceland can use geothermal power, but that’s difficult and expensive in places that don’t have the right geology. Solar power is great in places with lots of sun, but obviously not so good in places closer to the poles or with lots of cloud. Wave and tidal power have a lot of potential in coastal areas, but aren’t available inland. Wind power is widly useful, but there are still places that are much better than others. And of course, all of the above come with their own environmental impacts that may lead to them not being a good solution in some places.
So the future of sustainable energy is going to look very different in different places. It’s likely to be more distributed – wind and solar especially need to be spreade over large areas to work. And that means that there’s going to need to be a lot of work improving the power grid to be able to handle that, as well as energy storage since most renewable sources are less controlable than fossil fuels – you can’t choose when the sun shines or the wind blows.
It will also mean we’re likely to see a lot of things changing to be powered by electricity. Cars are the most obvious, with a big push for electic cars happening at the moment. But also things like home heating and cooking are going to have to change as well. Then there are planes and ships, which are much harder to change to fully electric, but if we really want a sustainable future we’re going to have to figure out how to make them work.
As James suggests, what many consider to be the perfect solution would be fusion power. Unfortunately we’re still a long way from making it work, but that would provide an essentially unlimited source of very clean power. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it would be cheap, so there would likely still be a lot of demand for renewable power sources.
-
anon answered on 4 May 2020:
I think, and pun is fully intended, that the sustainable energy IS the future 🙂
And it is clean by definition – any harmful emissions are not sustainable.
This definition actually opens a broad field of different ways of sustainable energy generation – as long as it can be shown to be sustainable enough.
Like the already mentioned nuclear power – modern reactors can recycle the waste, and other reactors are being developed that can work on the already recycled waste. In the end, whatever we cannot utilise is deposited deep underground, way below the underground water streams as to not contaminate them – counter-arguement for this is that we cannot guarantee it won’t become a huge issue few hundreds (or thousands) of years down the line. Like, if there is an event that shifts the grounds and exposes the waste deposit – which is very unlikely, of course, and the deposition sites are deliberately chosen among the most geologically stable.
That said, I fully agree with Ry, nuclear power right now is a safe and clean way to transition to more renewable sources. In fact, a few countries have already so far in this transition that they are shutting down their reactors (have a look at https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics for data on the energy production by country).Apart from the solar, wind and geothermal, there is also:
– Biomass. Basically, use the gas released by our organic waste, net zero emissions.
– Solar heating. Heat water by sunlight, use hot water for heating houses, or to generate energy by a turbine just like nuclear power – this is in fact very effective and very cheap, all you need is a bunch of black-painted water pipes on the roof and a pressure control, as an example there was a testing run of a such a system in Uppsala, Sweden, where it is quite cloudy most of the year (almost like in London) and the water pressure got so high it blew the pipes! A make-shift version of this using air instead of water is successfully employed in country-side conditions, with pipes feeding directly into a house, or garage. Best part, it is a passive system because if you install the pipes vertically the air will rise as it heats up and no fan is needed.
– Wave power, which extract energy from the surface waves on water – this can be either floating “snake” with generator pistons placed in the joints, or something like a fishing bob tugging at a generator on the bottom.The renewable energy as a whole is an entire field, and then each individual application is also one – for instance, in the last five years alone I have read about at least 4 different ways to get solar power, from printing your own cells on a sheet of paper to installing them in the window blinds or spraying them on a wall. We live in a time of great innovations!
So, looking at your question, if I you are considering a career in renewable energy – science, engineering, design – I think it’s a great idea.
-
Alex Leide answered on 4 May 2020:
This is such a good question, but the answer could get really long and complicated! Lots to consider.
Energy demand is increasing. In Europe it will increase a bit, in other parts of the world it will increase massively!
In the UK we are lucky to have offshore wind. This could meet a lot of our electricity needs. Electric cars could be used as batteries to store some spare electricity when they aren’t being used. But the electricity grid will need to update a lot for this to work…
Other countries could do solar + storage (batteries, hydro…)
Some places can’t do wind or solar because of geography or infrastructure or demands.
This leaves nuclear (fission and fusion). Right now, nuclear is big and expensive. You leave it running all the time, and it always makes electricity (and heat). There are new designs for small nuclear reactors which can turn on and off very fast to match electricity demand.
Solar and wind make electricity directly which is good. BUT lots of things need heat. Turning electricity into heat is very expensive and inefficient, especially for factories and heating buildings. Nuclear reactors make (very!) hot water. This could be used for district heating in cities and towns, or in factories recycling metal, or making cement…
I think developing advanced nuclear reactors is really important, especially for the rest of the world to be clean and sustainable.
(I should say that I research nuclear fusion and fission) -
Josh Dorrington answered on 4 May 2020: last edited 4 May 2020 4:16 pm
I thought I’d give you an overview of some of the options we have for power, and maybe you can decide how you think the future should look!
Fossil fuels: This includes coal, oil and gas; everything we dig up out the ground to burn. These have no place in sustainable energy production in the future because there is a limited supply of them, and they release polluting CO2 into the atmosphere. In theory we could use some small amounts of fossil fuels in the future if we captured the CO2 they released, and pumped it back down underground, but there is no clear evidence that this could be done on a large scale, and what if the CO2 leaked out!?
Solar power: The sun provides us with huge amounts of free energy and depsite what many people think, it doesn’t have to be super sunny all the time for solar to be useful. The main issue is that you only generate power in the daytime, so you have to store it somehow at night. Also you get more sunlight in summer than winter, so you’ll either have too much or too little power at some point in the year. Solar will probably make up a big part of our future power generation, but it is no good on its own.
Wind power: Similar to solar, wind is likely to be very important in the future, but also isn’t reliable: what if its not windy!? We can predict the winds a few days ahead so we should be able to plan round this, and often times sunny conditions will have low wind, and windy days won’t be sunny, so it works well with solar. Plus you can put them out in the sea, which you can’t do easily with solar panels.
Hydroelectric: This includes all methods that turn the flowing of water into energy, whether its a river, or the tide or strong waves. This can be a really great source of power that I expect we will use a lot in the future, but not everywhere has the water to make it work, and we have to be really careful not to destroy the ecosystems that rivers and oceans support!
Biomass: This is a fancy term for burning stuff, like plant waste or trees grown specifically for energy generation. It might have a role, because it doesn’t need a lot of organisation and infrastructure, and communities could have their own small biomass burners. In theory they are carbon neutral, but if we aren’t very careful with how we plant and manage the forests, we might make things worse, and it will only be a bit better than fossil fuel!
Nuclear (fission): I believe nuclear will be important in the future because it is steady: you can always generate the same amount of power making it very reliable. There are a lot of better designs than the ones we currently use, which are smaller cheaper and safer, but they still can be quite dangerous if ran badly. However unless we find a way to store solar and wind power until we need it, I think we will always want some nuclear to keep the lights on.
Nuclear (fusion): In 1950, nuclear fusion was 50 years away. Today it’s only 50 years away. Im not sure when we will have fusion power, but it won’t be soon and it has many of the same cost and radiation issues that nuclear fission has.
Comments