Electrification

Electricity: a panacea for sustainable energy

Can electrification solve climate change?

Published Dec 2022 | Revised Nov 2023

From Tesla to Maxwell, Edison, Faraday, and Volta; the history of electricity is a roll call of some of the greatest minds to have called this planet home. Electricity permeates all aspects of modern life on this planet.

It also happens to be one of the most discerning characteristics of our planet when viewed from satellites at night. The constellation of bright yellow dots seen from above is analogous to the twinkling stars and galactic constellations we see when we look at the sky. It is interesting therefore, that the fate of our planet could be dependent on our ability to electrify our entire energy value chain.

Our current approaches to energy generation are killing our planet. Man-made climate change is the inevitable consequences of continued reliance on our current energy production processes. Pivoting our entire energy value chain to electricity and electrification could be our best (and last) chance to tackle global warming and man-made climate change.

Here’s why.

It is ubiquitous to modern life

A look at that satellite night shot of the earth shows a concentration of yellow dots around the major cities of our planet. That night time map itself is a human development index that correlates with similar indices that measure economic output and the wealth of nations.

Electricity drives our modern world, and it is ubiquitous to pretty much every dimension of our future world. Leave aside the enormous list of things that we rely on which in turn rely on electricity and think of anything you can that doesn’t. Our world without electricity will be a very different world indeed.

As for our future world, electricity is the thread that runs through every future technological trend from AI to VR. Our homes, cars, hospitals, offices, recreation centres etc are all on a path towards increased reliance on electricity. We are on that same path and making our generation, distribution and use of electricity sustainable is a duty on us all. The good news is, electricity has been with us for years.

We understand it

Having relied on it to power all aspects of modern life for decades, we have come to understand electricity like very few other energy sources. We have mastered how to generate, transmit and consume it at scale.

Our ability to generate it sustainably is limited only by the choices we have made as a society. We already know that generating electricity from fossil fuel is not smart giving the impact of that process on the environment. We also know that we can generate electricity from solar, wind, wave, hydrogen, geothermal, hydro(gravity) and nuclear. And we have the technological know-how to do it.

Our economies and politics are, however, not on the same wavelength as our technological know-how or our knowledge of how damaging our current trajectory really is. Until such a time that we can get our politicians and economists in the same room as our technologists and scientists, our advanced knowledge and versatility of electricity will not translate into meaningful change towards attaining truly sustainable energy use.

It is versatile

Of all the secondary energy sources, electricity is the most versatile and amenable to being produced sustainably. It can replace other secondary energy sources such as heat. It can be used to produce hydrogen, our most abundant fuel which is used extensively across industries, especially in the production of heat for various industrial processes.

Electricity is already used heavily across our mobility and transport sector – lighting, electronics etc. Almost all mechanical processes involved in our logistics and mobility around the planet can be electrified.

Our vehicle transport system is undergoing an irreversible process of electrification. The rail sector was electrified many years ago. Aviation and shipping will eventually be electrified. Whilst journeying outside earth will take a long time to electrify, no one is setting off any time soon, so electrifying space travel (if/when possible) can wait.

It is in the production of heat above 1000 degrees Celsius that electricity starts to struggle. We haven’t figured out how to generate such high heat with direct electricity. But we already know how to generate hydrogen from electricity, and hydrogen can surely replace coal in the generation of very high heat (above 1000 degrees Celsius) for industrial processes. Hydrogen, when produced (or converted) sustainably is a sustainable energy source that doesn’t damage our planet.

If we needed to focus all our economic resources on one single strategy for transitioning our world towards sustainable energy use, it would have to be electricity and electrification because of its versatility and potential to be carbon-neutral. It may even be able to meet all our energy needs.

It can be carbon-neutral

As we progress on the journey towards sustainable energy use, carbon is an important marker. Carbon is central to the discourse on sustainability, climate change, and global warming. It has become a unit of sustainability in its own right, with a special place in our regulations and contracts.

Carbon-neutrality is a central theme in the fight against global warming. So, technologies and processes that are carbon-neutral are in and others are out. Our knowledge of generating electricity in a carbon-neutral way is quite advanced. Our implementation of these technologies is lacking.

At the point of use, electricity itself leaves no carbon emissions. Whilst the actual work done by that electricity may produce carbon, emissions, the electricity itself doesn’t, unlike gasoline, for example.

The transmission of electricity, whilst (currently) wasteful, is not carbon-intensive in itself. Barring the carbon emission from the generation of the steel for the pylons, the mining of the components for the cables and the removal of vegetation that is involved, the actual process of transmitting electricity can be carbon-neutral.

It is in the generation of electricity that we continue to rely heavily on use of carbon-intensive processes such as the use of coal power stations. Our reliance on coal and other fossil fuels for the generation of electricity is an economic and political reality of today. There is no technical limitation to our ability to generate all our electricity needs through sustainable, carbon-neutral processes such as wind and solar.

Whilst sources such as solar and wind have inherent limitations dictated by their cyclicity, electricity storage systems can bridge that gap. Nuclear, for all its problems, can also generate all our electricity needs in a carbon-neutral way.

Electricity and electrification is really a low-hanging fruit in our quest for sustainable energy. It is a very good one as well. We have built our world around it, we know it, it is versatile and carbon-friendly. It may well be the panacea to our problem of sustainable energy generation and use. Our scientists and technologists know it, it is time our economists and politicians get it.

Tell them.

Further reading (site: keywords): | bp.com : world energy report  |  iea.org : Electricity |