What
does electrifying the world really mean?
--
Protection
against
Osama Bin Ladens?
---
First a
Marshall Plan for
the entire world
As important as
electricity has been in the 20th century, says EPRI CEO Kurt Yeager, it will be
infinitely more important in this one, but that depends on innovation.
"Electricity and innovation go
hand-in-hand," he said of this century since our challenge today is too
many people with too little power.
He sees grave dangers in the world unless everyone
has access to at least a modest amount of electricity.
"Civilizations and basically all living
species ultimately depend on energy.
They die -- whether it's anthills or human
civilizations -- when their populations exceed their access to energy.
"We are rapidly approaching a world of 9-10
billion people," he forecast, with some 2 billion without access to
electricity now.
He envisions that number's growing -- "at the
rate we're going" -- to 4 billion without access to any electricity by the
middle of this century.
That many people without access to any economic
opportunity, "is a pretty scary prospect" producing fertile fields for
the Bin Ladens of the world ... [with] tremendous urban concentrations of super
under-privileged throughout the developing world and that is not a ustainable
future," he said in an interview.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: We have to come up with a portfolio of power sources that will -- as cleanly and efficiently as possible -- satisfy the energy needs of a world of 10 billion people and we've got to get on with that. As much as I trust that renewable energy may be our most important energy source, in this century I can't bet on that.
"I'm much
more concerned about the 'temperature' of the human climate than I am anything
else," noted Yeager, referring to global warming as the major concern
driving the switch to renewable energy.
"When you start analyzing the problems, you
really can't get at the fundamental issues that create tensions and major global
security issues until people have opportunity in this world.
Yeager is in favor of spreading democracy but
before doing that you have to create infrastructure and economic opportunities
that in some parts of the world simply don't exist.
He envisions a Marshall Plan for the world.
He remembers his parents grumbling about bailing
out Europeans but believes in hindsight it was a "brilliant" thing to
do.
The US has "prospered tremendously from that
strategic investment," and as the world leader he would like to see that
sort of investment on a global basis.
Yeager doesn't mean "to bankroll the
world" since it's not altruism he's proposing but enlightened self
interest.
He calls a public-private partnership around electricity and around strategic
investment in this country and elsewhere, absolutely essential.
"Every source of energy today can be improved
dramatically, whether it's nuclear, coal, gas or renewable -- we are going to
need them all and as much of them as we can possibly get.
Yeager at EPRI fostered and is most proud of the
Energy Technology Roadmap (www.epri.com/roadmap/).
The roadmap study revealed that we're not at the
beginning of the end but at the end of the beginning of opportunities, he told
RT.
Its bottom-line message is that we're running out
of time and not putting emphasis on the development of this portfolio of energy
sources that are going to be needed to electrify the world.
Yeager has written an as-yet unpublished paper,
Electricity and the Human Prospect on the "thermodynamics of history"
and how civilizations have all foundered when they failed to meet their energy
challenges.
"They died [from the] inside out because
people were not getting the benefits of what it was costing them to maintain
their energy system.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH: What we are doing today in terms of propping up an oil regime is certainly very similar to what earlier civilizations did that led them to fail. It's highly loaded with entropy and it's going to do us in if we don't get off of it.
Entropy here
means the drive of natural systems -- such as the universe -- to use up their
energy until they reach inert uniformity.
Yeager looks forward to what he calls an
electro-hydrogen economy using electrolysis to turn water into fuel and is
concerned about the hype, headlines and promises he doesn't believe are
supported by technical or economic realities.
"We are looking at a process that will take
us at least 50 years to reach a level of large scale commercial viability of
such a vision and only if we are committed to doing it.
"We always are looking for instant
gratification in everything we do in this society and that's one of our fatal
flaws," he cautioned.
Patient investment in the future not immediate
consumption -- is what we have to do and we're going to have to provide a
certain amount of our marginal incomes for investment into creating this kind of
a future.
While the outcome is uncertain, Yeager believes an
alternative to giving our best effort doesn't exist.
And investment in DG?
"Tremendous potential," he replied, and
not just gas-fired fuel cells, microturbines and big windmill fields but
photovoltaics on rooftops.
They won't replace the centralized power system
"but 25% or more of our power can probably ultimately come from these
distributed sources over the next 20 to 25 years.
He urged the industry to see distributed power as
an asset rather than a liability on the power system but seeing that
"depends again on our transformation to a digital infrastructure.
He's not amused by power sources that go on and
off because they're simply not dispatchable.
Since the industry can't plan for them "you
have to build backup power.
"It sounds great to build a megawatt of
windmills but if I have to go out and build a megawatt gas turbine behind it,
that's not a very useful thing to do if I'm running the gas turbine as much as I
am the windmills.
Yeager uses the analogy of an imaginary railroad
where it takes 10 days to open or close a switch. Not many trains would get
through.
"That's basically what we have in
electricity.
The "10 days" in the analogy relates to
the speed of a switch on the grid opening or closing relative to the speed of
light the open or close command travels at.
A digital switch would move at the speed of light.
Sending a digital message to the switch doesn't
make it a digital grid, noted Yeager.
Until the grid has a digital system with
instantaneous management, DG "will always be a trivial contributor and one
that will to a large extent be viewed as a liability on the power system".
Advice on who to talk with?
Talk with your kids "and in my case my the
grandkids" to find out how the new industry should be created, Yeager
advised.
They were born with a computer and are interested
in more than "just keeping the lights on," he reminded.
"If this industry doesn't offer it, someone
else will," and Yeager would see that as a tremendous shame and lost
opportunity "for the industry and more importantly for the nation if we
don't get on with beginning to recognize that the new generation has got a whole
different set of expectations."
Is Yeager really going to retire.
"Cold-turkey is probably not the way I want
to go," he replied, so he's looking forward to staying "engaged in
these topics.
He joined EPRI in 1974.
He was named the Technology Policy Leader for
Energy last year by Scientific American.
How will he caution his replacement, Steven
Specker?
His message is that EPRI is a collaborative
research organization operating as a public-private partnership.
"Our first function is to provide the most
objective and credible scientific and technical development possible not to
replace but to augment the supplier and the community.
"Our job is to be as absolutely credible as
possible."
EPRI needs to create incentives "for the
development and transfer-to-application of the science and technology that will
make electricity the most vital resource for man that it possibly can be."
"Even in a competitive industry,
collaboration is a very vital tool," he said.
Published in Restructuring
Today on September 1, 2004.