A place to store all notes on books and thoughts relating to energy transition. t
Energy is the fundamental limiting factor of the universe.
Hierarchy of thinking
- First principles
- What is energy?
- How can we associate it with cost?
- Case study
- Applying those first principles to the economic growth we have seen
- Why those principles imply it can’t continue.
- Why technology growth and knowledge growth could imply otherwise.
- What an energy abundant future might look like.
- Finance
- The role of climate finance.
- The role of market based infrastructure.
What is energy?
In Science, to model the world, things to be examined are broken down into systems. A ball and the Earth is a system, the universe can be a system. The idea is that at some point you have the things you’re interested in and those that you’re not. It’s the spherical cow notion. For a system we define a measure of that system called Energy. This is a numerical value that’s a property of the system.
Energy and our intuitive notion of cost
Our intuitive notion of ‘cost’ implies some form of labour.
Case Study
Solar powered communities and where it got us
Dinosaurs in the ground and where that got us
Future
When projecting to the future it makes sense to look at deviation from a base scenario. The base scenario might be something from the IPCC?
- What are the future energy consumption projections from the IPCC?
It also make sense to take the viewpoint of a smart person and work from there.
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The ‘cost’ view of energy is an important one. In fact, the notion of cost arises out of work and energy.
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What prevents us from reaching a super abundant energy future?
Base Scenario
Models
Jevens Paradox
Maximum Power Principle
Kleibers law
As size increases, the metabolic rate of the animal does not increase by the same factor but a smaller one. This implies larger animals are more energy efficient.
- A blue whale needs more energy than a mose to survive.
- It will have a bmr of some value, the mouse another value.
- We assume this bmr is related to it’s size, particularly its volume.
- If a whale is 10,000 times bigger than a mouse, is its bmr 10,000 times that of a mouse?
Kleiber found that its not a linear relationship, but that it tapers off. The bigger you get, the more efficient energy can be expended. So it might be that the whales energy use is 9,000 times that of the mouse.
bmr is proportional to the mass to the 3/4 exponent.
Basal metabolism of animals is observed to be proportional to their surface area. As something increases in size it’s volume grows much faster than it’s height or width. Volume is a measure of surface area in this context.
Getting the surface area of a linearly growing animal is non-trivial.
Production Functions
How technology affects population dynamics?
‘Growth’ by Smil.
Up until the 19th century most societies relied largely on biomass and animal labour for non-human work. Smil estimates that annual use of energy was about 18GJ/capita at the height of imperial rule and claims that it didn’t really change for the next 1000 years.
Growth of energy use from the 18th century
- Global primary energy use 1800 - 1900 was 20 EJ to 44 EJ.
- For the 20th century it grew to 391 EJ with fossil fuels supplying 80% of this.
The growth rates have slowed from about 10% a year in the decades of early fossil fuel extraction to about less than 4%. This implies its a logistic curve, that as the absolute quantity increases its rate of change decreases. The logisitic curve of primary energy use indicates 690EJ by 2100.
Agriculture stops being solar powered.
Smil projected that for the 3.7 fold increase in population in the 20th century total harvested land area only increased
Synthesis of ammonia requires just 1% of global energy use but the application of nitrogen fertilizers has enabled us to grow about 40% of the current global food supply, and about 50% of China’s crop harvest.
Every second person in China are now adequately fed because of this.
Meat consumption in abundance as a modern phenomenon
Large harvests of crops means its easier to divert more crops into animal feed (about 50-60% in affluent countries).
Global meat output rose from less than 50Mt in 1950 to 230Mt in the year 2000 and by 2015 it had surpassed 300 Mt.
Logistic Regression
How might I replicate these logistic curves smil has? Smil seems to like the idea of fitting logistic curves to things. It implies that there is feedback going on. So, if we take the primary oil consumption historically and fit it, what do we get.
p.419 “Sources of economic growth”
Economists seemed to have focused on labour and capital to explain economic output increases. In the middle of the 20th century it was discovered that output growth could not be explained by these factors alone. A measure of total factor productivity (TFP) was introduced as an explanation of the interaction between labour and capital (like knowledge).
Arrow then introduced the notion that endogoneous innovation could take place. TFP pushes a notion that growth in output per unit labor depends entirely on the rate of technological progress.
US growth has been declining though. 1987-2004, labour productivity growth was ~2.1%, 2004-2014 ~1.2% and post 2011 its averaged about 0.6%. Smil then says, this along with the aging population (reduction in labour supply) is not a good sign. Although, I would think AI might help with this.
Questions
How tech growth might lead to sustainability?
What constraints are on our current growth?
How do we relate entropy to our everyday experience?
How do we encapsulate all these complex processes under the ‘simple’ constraints that
conservation seems to posit?