Sustainability
Our paramount task: to keep our earth in shape
Sustainability means the ability to sustain i.e. to maintain and preserve.
In our time sustainability means especially the processes and actions through which we avoid depletion of natural resources and keep the ecological balance and the quality of life in our societies.
So, to enable this planet to be in a condition where life as a whole can flourish, the way modern societies are organized needs to be re-designed using a regenerative perspective.
We need to regenerate and reinvigorate our planet earth.
Back in 2005, the World Summit on Social Development identified sustainable development goals, such as economic viability, environmental protection, and social equity.
Social sustainability is the maintenance of equitable, diverse, connected, and democratic communities that provide a satisfactory quality of life.
Economic sustainability is the maintenance of a satisfactory standard of living for the whole population.
Environmental sustainability is the maintenance of a stable, harmonious relationship between human culture and the natural world.
Circular economy
However, to improve sustainability a circular framework is necessary where we recycle materials and resources as much as possible as shown in the figures.
Green Energy
Wind Energy
Wind energy is the use of wind to provide mechanical power through wind turbines to turn electric generators for electrical power.
Wind power is a popular sustainable, renewable energy source with little impact on the environment.
Wind farms consist of many individual wind turbines, which are connected to the electric power transmission network.
Offshore wind is steadier and stronger than on land and offshore farms have less visual impact, but construction and maintenance costs are significantly higher.
Small onshore wind farms can feed some energy into the grid or provide power to isolated off-grid locations.
Wind power gives variable power, which is consistent from year to year but varies over shorter time scales.
Therefore, it must be used with other power sources to give a reliable supply.
Solar Energy
Solar energy is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, most frequently using photovoltaics (PV) cells that convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic effect.
As the cost of solar electricity has fallen, the number of grid-connected solar PV systems has grown into the millions and gigawatt-scale photovoltaic power stations are being built.
Solar PV is rapidly becoming an inexpensive, low-carbon technology to harness renewable energy from the Sun.
Solar energy is expected to be the world’s largest source of electricity in the future. Most solar installations would be in China and India.
Hydropower
Hydropower is the use of falling or fast-running water to produce electricity or to power machines.
This is achieved by converting the kinetic energy of water into electrical or mechanical energy.
Hydropower is an attractive alternative to fossil fuels as it does not directly produce atmospheric pollutants. However, economic, sociological, and environmental downsides limit its use.
Tidal Energy
Tidal energy is harnessed by converting energy from tides into useful forms of power, mainly electricity using various methods.
Tides are more predictable than the wind and the sun.
Many recent technological developments and improvements in design and turbine technology indicate that the total availability of tidal power may be much higher than previously assumed and that economic and environmental costs may be brought down to competitive levels.
Policies promoting R&D are needed to achieve further cost reductions and large-scale development.
Wave Power
Wave power is the capture of energy of wind waves to do useful work – for example, electricity generation, water desalination, or pumping water.
A machine that exploits wave power is a wave energy converter (WEC).
Wave-power generation is not a widely employed commercial technology. However, there have been attempts to use this source of energy since at least 1890 mainly due to its high power density.
Geothermal Energy
Geothermal energy is the thermal energy generated and stored in the Earth. Earth’s internal heat is thermal energy generated from radioactive decay and continual heat loss from Earth’s formation.
With water from hot springs, geothermal energy has been used for bathing since Paleolithic times and for space heating since ancient Roman times, but it is now better known for its electricity generation and use for district heating, space heating, spas, industrial processes, desalination and agricultural applications.
Geothermal power is cost-effective, reliable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly, but has historically been limited to areas near tectonic plate boundaries.
Recent technological advances have dramatically expanded the range and size of viable resources, especially for applications such as home heating, opening a potential for widespread exploitation.
The Earth’s geothermal resources are theoretically more than adequate to supply humanity’s energy needs, but only a very small fraction may be profitably exploited.
Carbon-neutral fuel
Carbon-neutral fuel is a fuel that produces no net greenhouse gas emissions or carbon footprint.
In practice, this usually means fuels that are made using carbon dioxide (CO2) as a feedstock.
Proposed carbon-neutral fuels can broadly be grouped into synthetic fuels, which are made by chemically hydrogenating carbon dioxide, and biofuels, which are produced using natural CO2-consuming processes like photosynthesis.
The carbon dioxide used to make synthetic fuels may be directly captured from the air, recycled from power plant flue exhaust gas or derived from carbonic acid in seawater.
In order to be truly carbon-neutral, any energy required for the process must be itself be carbon-neutral or emissions-free, like renewable energy.
If the combustion of carbon-neutral fuels is subject to carbon capture at the flue or exhaust pipe, they result in net-negative carbon dioxide emission and may thus constitute a form of greenhouse gas remediation.
Negative emissions are widely considered an indispensable component of efforts to limit global warming, although negative emissions technologies are currently not economically viable for private sector companies.
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Carbon dioxide elimination
Carbon dioxide removal
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR), also known as greenhouse gas removal, is a process in which carbon dioxide gas (CO2) is removed from the atmosphere and sequestered for long periods of time – in the context of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions targets, CDR is increasingly integrated into climate policy, as a climate engineering option.
CDR methods are also known as negative emissions technologies and may be cheaper than preventing some agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.
Carbon capture and storage
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) or carbon capture and sequestration is the process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) before it enters the atmosphere, transporting it, and storing it (carbon sequestration) for centuries or millennia.
Usually, the CO2 is captured from large point sources, such as a chemical plant or biomass power plant, and then stored in an underground geological formation.
Disruptions Predicted by Tony Seba
Tony Seba, thinks the world is in for major disruptions favoring the green transformation, which he predicts will take place in the next decade if we allow them to happen.
Disruptions of the energy, transportation, and food sectors seem inevitable if we are to save the planet.
1. Solar, Wind, and Batteries (SWB)
Grid energy storage or large-scale energy storage in batteries is used for storing electrical energy from intermittent wind power and solar power or when demand is low. Later the electric energy is returned to the grid when demand is high.
Solar, wind, and batteries (SWB) will disrupt coal, oil, and gas as shown in this video and in this report.
For a 100% SWB system, the energy generation and storage capacity can be traded off against one another as shown in the Clean Energy U-curve shown below.
A smaller energy generating capacity demands a greater storage capacity (left side).
A larger energy generating capacity allows a smaller storage capacity (right side).
The minimal overall cost (minimum of the U-curve) is at an energy generating capacity of about 3-5 times that of the existing grid (see report for details).
2. Autonomous Electric Vehicles (A-EVs) providing Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS)
An Autonomous Electric Vehicle (A-EV) is a self-driving electric car that needs no human intervention at all. This capability is currently an add-on to the electric vehicle (EV) which includes both hardware (sensors and processors) and software (the vehicle operating system). Hardware and software are rapidly improving.
Autonomous electric vehicles (A-EVs) providing Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS) will disrupt internal combustion engines and private vehicle ownership. This video and this report explain.
3. Precision Fermentation and Cellular Agriculture (PFCA)
Precision Fermentation (PF) is a technique using micro-organisms to produce complex organic molecules, such as milk and egg-white proteins. Cellular Agriculture (CA) refers to cultivating animal stem cells to produce meat and seafood. The cost of these techniques is decreasing rapidly.
Precision Fermentation (PF) and Cellular Agriculture (CA) will disrupt meat, milk, and other animal products as explained in this video and in this report.
The three disruptions are already unfolding simultaneously, and their implications for climate change are profound.
Yet it will be up to us to decide whether or not we deploy these technologies worldwide rapidly enough to avoid dangerous climate change.
The effective approach is to focus on a handful of key technologies that will transform the entire foundation of our economy.
But simple does not mean easy. Simple means we understand the key drivers and levers of major systemic change.
However, there are many obstacles to overcome, and we cannot afford to be complacent. Despite the tremendous opportunities that the clean disruption of energy, transportation, and food will bring, technology alone is not enough.
We can either accelerate the disruptions and solve the climate crisis by ushering in a new era of clean prosperity, or we can waste precious time and trillions of dollars propping up the incumbent system with an ineffective approach that exposes humanity to additional risk of climate change impacts.
Societies around the world must make the right choices.
Further references:
Article: Asia’s largest cell-cultured chicken facility to be up and running in Bedok from 2023.
Article: Dutch government agrees to invest €60M in cellular agriculture.
Article: Four EU countries commit to a tenfold increase in North Sea wind power by 2050.
Article: AU FOOD accelerates the development of cultured meat within the framework of a new Nordic network.
Article: Lab-Grown Food: The Future of Sustainable Food Systems?
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