One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow…

Contents:

It’s a journey, at all scales;    Energy Obesity;    A slow change of mind;    Big and little;    The insatiable thirst;    Does decrease mean the dark ages;    Does high tech. mean the best? (an ode to wind-down windows);    The five-way tussle of local underutilisation, efficiency, construction, recycling and waste;    Efficiency, distribution, scale, - and the links between them;    Intermittency, the storage competition, and local versus distal;     Talking to just enough people with just enough cash to do it and show it;    The trail-blazers – and the power of a scalable demo;    One man went to mow;    Nobody likes a bully and we’re not looking for a cult;    La Vida local.   

It’s a journey, at all scales.

We seem to be deluged by guilt trips constantly these days. Whatever it is we do, there is someone somewhere calling vehemently for us to stop.  Fair enough, we should I suppose sometimes be challenged to know about, and explain, why we do what we do. 

However, the purpose of this article is not to send you, me, us, on another guilt trip. Personal constraints are different, and matter and I recognise that. We all find ourselves in various straightjackets personal and financial. Some things must take time and are not possible to change instantly. That said, we can be guilty of overestimating the difficulty of doing stuff quickly too – often we just don’t realise how easy it might be. To change the way we think ourselves, with an eye on the future or the present – well, at a personal level it can be progress and is at least a start.  

Energy obesity. 

With those caveats it is hard not to observe that the world is energetically obese. One might legitimately say in light of modern climate science – that it is morbidly so.

At risk of showing my age, can anyone else remember push mowers? Lawnmowers that you kept sharp by hand and pushed by hand to keep the lawns short? It took longer and maybe wasn’t as even and got stuck more often or skidded more readily when it was a bit wet or thick - but it mostly did the job and was a good bit of exercise, helping to keep fit.

Today, who does it? No-one. Or if anyone does, not in my neighbourhood.  

So, am I about to rush out and buy one? I still could. ￡60 made from Bosch, available from B&Q. Great exercise. It’s there - yet we can do it on petrol, or we can do it on electricity. How apt – it kind of summarises so many of the options before us. Ultra-local fuelled by food and our own muscles – it doesn’t come much more local – or fuelled by fossil fuels – the fruit of micro-organisms that lived hundreds of millions of years ago – or electricity – potentially fuelled by renewable energy but only by virtue of a grid of copper - mined, more likely than not as an ore in Chile or the US.

Here we all are though, if we are lucky enough to have a garden with a lawn, opting in preference to choose the electric or fossil fuel option. Am I wrong? If so, give yourself a gold star, you are the exception. 

As for our lawnmowers, so for everything. We operate day in, day out, the more energetically expensive option over the one can do ourselves, and which is better for us, but which is harder work. We are a bit lazy I suppose, and from there arises the situation that we are all energetically obese, by imposed design just as much by choice. 

Consuming, consuming, consuming, more than we need to. Our devices, our homes, our ways of life, are all somehow pitched to encourage that. We don’t question it often. It is not something we can necessarily change instantly or easily, since a lot of systems are geared up to make it that way. We can though, recognise it more, and think about it more. And begin to think about changing what we can – not bullied by others to do so, but because we start to get that it is good for us. 

Does the planet’s bum look big in this?

A slow change of mind

Will it solve all our energy problems to stop that energy obesity we all take part in? I don’t pretend to know. Others much more literate on the subject than I suggest it can and I work to absorb the detail in those messages more fully than I have so far. I do know it won’t fix our energy problems to ignore it, and that anything we can do at scale can help. That phrase “at scale” can mean a few big things or lots of little things. Or a mixture of the two. 

We need to manage expectations too. Are we going to change all our bad habits overnight – no. Maybe I’m wrong there, and if the case studies of human behaviour exist somewhere to prove it, I’m all ears. Assuming I’m not wrong though, should we beat ourselves up daily, incessantly reflecting on our failures? No – life is too short to spend it in self-flagellation and we may all be wiped out by some universal cataclysm tomorrow. Some sober reflection is required, and some even-more-sober action, but it’s about doable change, not despondency.

Nurturing a change in our thinking, as long as we are able to think, is certainly do-able and desirable. A change in the questions we ask, slowly, together. When we find ourselves in a position to make big new long-term investments, bringing energy use into the equation. That, over time can maybe make a big difference. It might just be a maybe, but maybes are often under-rated. Sometimes it is not the action but the change in attitude that drives it - which makes the truly fundamental and as yet unsuspected shifts possible.

Big and little

Has it struck anyone else how so many of the solutions we are used to talking about these days are huge? Massive commitments to this that and the other. Billions of pounds of investment. Central government strategies. Mega-corporations. Be it electrical grids, hydrogen economies, nuclear reactors, offshore wind farms, gas pipelines across seas and continents.

They are either that or so small and local. A local solar panel. A local small wind turbine. A local heat pump sourcing heat from the ground or a nearby water body. Some local harnessing or deployment of moving water. It’s huge impressive rhinoceri versus tiny agile gazelles.

You’re probably thinking I’m going to decry one as evil incarnate while raising the other to some holy altar of greenness. I’m not. I have no crystal ball, but I’d be surprised if whatever solutions we ultimately land on didn’t involve some mixture of the big and the little. However, what I am increasingly convinced of, is that we don’t look at the little, and for that matter the medium, enough. I’m increasingly convinced we can get into the habit of doing it more - and that it will help us a lot to do so. 

I perceive it as a context of “the power of place” and I have landed on that phrase mostly by virtue of inspiration from people who are doing it. People rooted in energy or engineering careers that are looking at the places they know and thinking differently about how things can be done. Done cleverly, elegantly. Not driven by some obsession to replace the big, but simply to make the best of what we have around us, and hence to lessen the costs, the oh so undeniable costs, that come with the big. Where we have to revert to the big for whatever reason, then to reduce the unnecessary burdens on it. Not in some unobtainable perfection that has no cost or no impact, or no drawbacks, but something that is better. Not something that is always necessarily guaranteed to provide 100% of what we need, but something which if we can take it from providing 25% to 75%, has helped. 

Big and little

The insatiable thirst

Also, through the little I do know, I have been drawn inexorably to the conclusion that the thirst for ever increasing more has to eventually stop. The idea that exponential expansion of everything for evermore can continue has to be an illusion. This is an idea which is gradually gaining traction. 

The falsehood that when oil and gas become unobtainable for whatever reason – be it scarcity or environmental impact, that we magically get off and hop on the next magically bigger bus that comes along and continue the party of our voracious energy machine. That if we think it hard enough and shout it loudly enough, the magic bus will become a possibility. 

We have, to be fair, lived through several generations when this kind of expansion has been possible and so it comes naturally to our generations to expect more of it. It has been possible over the course of the past century because we have been doing it on the back of a resource accumulated over hundreds of millions of years. In each of our own individual lifetimes we have therefore become accustomed to this expansion as if it is the natural order of things. Yet it is not, it is anything but. The history of the world is as much about enforced slow-downs as it is about unexpected accelerations. 

This message, I should add is one directed mostly at those of us who have much already. Those who have little are allowed and indeed entitled to thirst for more. Those of us though, who are wallowing in our energy, dipping our treats in a chocolate fountain of energy supply, can do well - not to tip the chocolate fountain over in disgust, but rather to acknowledge the chocolate fountain is coming, and must come, to an end, and to plan accordingly. Time to move to the fruit bowl. 

From chocolate fountain to fruit bowl

Does decrease mean the dark ages?

There is sometimes “in the air” a dystopian reverse view that decreasing the energy we use involves a regression into a time where Neanderthals gathered around a fire outside their cave. 

Decreasing the energy we use might mean a decrease in the amount of sophisticated technology we have around us, but there is no suggestion that decreasing our energy usage has to instantly make everyone miserable and uncomfortable. That’s not to say it’s going to be easy, or not involve compromises either – but the name of the game is to reduce waste and increase efficiency and to go ultra-local – including our own muscular energy – in our energy supply wherever we can. 

Does high tech mean the best? (An ode to wind-down windows).

Similarly, reducing energy use and wastage doesn’t necessarily mean we turn our back on technology instantly as something inherently evil. Technology has been and will remain a force for good and will on occasions assist in our attempts to use energy most efficiently. Yet neither is technology for its own sake necessarily good. 

My first car was a Ford Anglia – and it had wind-down windows. They were inherently simple and purely mechanical in function. They were possible to get positioned right easily without looking at them. These days we all have electronic wind-down windows and I don’t know about you but the amount of distracting fiddling I have to do to get the window just right with those techniques is not an improvement. Up down, up down, up down finally just right. Talking about winding up – in more ways than one. 

The capability to do things electronically and in a more sophisticated way, does not always make them the best solution. Simple has its benefits. This is not saying one wins out over the other, just that if we are going high tech., making sure we know why and that the benefits outweigh the costs. Being simple and mechanical to fix if it breaks can be a great advantage. Electronic sophistication is wonderful until there is a power cut. We can make battery back-up but there are environmental costs to doing that everywhere.

The five-way tussle of local underutilisation, efficiency, construction, recycling and waste

As the world grows more engrossed in battling shifts to and from various resources and energy sources, one thing it's safe to say we are all realising - is that no one size fits all. There is no magic rabbit in the hat looking at its watch wondering why we haven’t pulled it out yet.

Rather than desperately landing on one thing as a catch-all solution, a more interesting exercise is taking any one place and thinking about the things that are at play, the elements which control what is “best”.

The following are five things, amongst others, which I suspect are important:

Local underutilisation:

• Are there energy and commodity sources locally that simply aren’t being used, and which could be with relatively little cost or impact?
• Where that is the case there are great benefits in relieving the loads on other systems and using things in a way that avoids the costs, impacts and efficiency losses of distal distribution. 
• Sunshine, wind, moving water, earth heat, earth cool, water heat and cool, are some of the things we look to increasingly.

Efficiency:

• Efficiency is a key factor – how much of the energy delivered at source, can after various capture, storage and distribution/transmission processes, reach the application. There is little sense in diverting energy for very big energy demands from more efficient routes to less efficient routes. 
• A key caveat to choosing the most efficient route at scale is where there are construction material bottlenecks and impacts in deploying the more efficient route. A lot of discussion around critical minerals and mining, for example centres around this. 
• Efficiency becomes more important the larger the scale of the application – and it becomes less important as we start to address small scale under-utilised sources that wouldn’t otherwise be used.  A low efficiency use of some energy that would not otherwise be used - is better than no use.
• Efficiency also involves elements of storage where intermittency is involved. If an energy source is intermittent, then converting the excess at times of surplus involves that extra step of conversion to storage methods and its retrieval - steps that all decrease efficiency to varying degrees.

Physical construction

• Metals, plastics. These are not the only things we use to make things, but they are typically two of the most common and most energy intensive. One involves the hugely energy intense processes of mining, ore mineral extraction, and then metal refinement. The other involves, usually, drilling for and producing hydrocarbons and all the transportation and infrastructure costs that go into getting it refined and getting it to the plastics factory.
• When there are devices that can be constructed mostly from widely available local materials excess and that can be used for capture of energy that would otherwise be lost, that can be an interesting factor even when efficiency isn’t the greatest – especially if it alleviates the demand on other energy provision routes with a greater impact.

Recycling

• There are some processes that destroy the commodity they use. The most obvious is coal and hydrocarbon combustion. Those molecules once deployed in this way can’t be used again. Conversely, if they are not destroyed but deployed in plastics, there can be options for recycling. 
• Hydrogen combustion is a little different in that the raw material is destroyed in the process of combusting it, but the waste product – water – enters a cycle that eventually allows it to be deployed again. So as long as no other material like hydrocarbon is deployed in its production (most hydrogen is currently made from hydrocarbons) the material cycle is closed.
• Battery minerals and electronics and their recycling are a little bit more complicated – but a lot of ongoing work is devoted to determining how much is recyclable.  Suffice to say this kind of mineral extraction is a totally different kettle of fish to the total destruction that occurs in combustion. Though the ionic state of an anode or cathode in a battery might change, the fundamental element remains what it is, where it is.

Waste:

• Whatever is left over and the impact it has, is the waste. For hydrocarbon combustion - carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. For nuclear energy - the radioactive waste and wastes from uranium mineral extraction. For wind and solar - the end-of-life disposal of non-recyclable items. For batteries, similar. These wastes have costs and impacts.

Any deployment of any energy source therefore involves an interplay and a tension between these things. The most efficient processes make most sense at large scale but involve lots of construction from raw materials and the energy involved in that construction, be it recurring or one-off with recycling. Even inefficient methods can make sense at smaller scales if they can be deployed mostly from local materials to exploit energy that could not otherwise be deployed (easily or cheaply) in the more efficient ways.  Each of these elements is not static, and approaches to improve them are occurring all the time.  

The tensions of energy optimisation

Efficiency, distribution, scale - and the links between them

Whatever changes in our global energy philosophies take place, it is still hard to imagine a need for big energy and big distribution going away. Where that is required, there is a cost to the construction and the distribution networks, and it is not cheap. 

There is an argument that says where you do in the end have to go big, it makes more sense to go really big and hit the thresholds for economies of scale. This is one of the arguments sometimes applied to nuclear fission and fusion – not because they are cheap – they aren’t – but rather because they give (conceptually in the case of fusion) a certain security to a big scale of supply for small land footprint.  Also, it has to be said, sometimes device operations may be physically easier the bigger (and more expensive) the device is. This might for example be true with the radius-of-curvature-influenced control of plasmas by magnetic fields in toroidal fusion reactors (i.e. tokamaks) - a realm of ongoing R&D, still yet to manifest in a commercial reactor. ITER may have an advantage over other experimental fusion devices simply because it is huge. In that case the scale of investment at the R&D stage has proven too big even for national scale and so nations have clubbed together.  

If the intention is to do things at large scale, what does not make sense is to divert more efficient processes into those that are way less efficient. With the huge amounts of energy that are involved in large scale distribution systems, even a few percentage points lost in efficiency are losses of vast amounts of energy. If the networks are big, in other words, the efficiency has to be the best we can manage within raw material and waste impact constraints. 

If in contrast, the uses are lots of small to medium energy crumbs that would not otherwise be picked up at all, then an approach which picks up any number of them to deploy locally and relieve the larger networks, and which doesn’t depend on many outside resources, can be helpful. In those situations low efficiency collection is better than no collection at all. 

Do we physically have the raw materials to make the number of big distribution networks -of any kind – that we ultimately want to make though? Into the future? That is an equation and a question that is still being addressed. What seems clear is that we are far from exhausting those raw materials just yet, even if the details of the geographic supply chains to individual nations can be a very different and more problematic picture.  

What is less clear is whether the various environmental and waste impacts of constructing those networks is something society can regard as acceptable. Likely there is a balance to be had. Whatever the case, decreasing the amount of energy we use is a fundamental requirement that relieves the strains and raw material demands in every system, and every permutation of them. Furthermore increasing local sources decreases the environmental impacts incurred in constructing distribution networks.

Intermittency, the storage competition, and local versus distal

The ongoing discussion surrounding renewables of course, is regarding the intermittency of some large-scale renewable energy sources such as large solar farms and wind farms onshore and offshore. Deep geothermal is more steady and is long-lived, but typically also higher capital spend up front.

Does it make sense to convert that intermittently supplied excess energy into things like hydrogen? Or are other storage systems better – of which there are a variety. The logic outlined above would dictate that wherever there are more efficient alternatives, they should be used instead. That might have ramifications for mining and mineral extraction if that alternative is based on batteries or similar, but at least such things once in place will have an element of recyclability to them. Compressed air, lifting water to give potential energy, and thermal options are alternatives.

If we genuinely can’t envisage any other alternative for energy storage than conversion to hydrogen, then we shouldn’t add to the efficiency loss by also imposing additional storage and distribution inefficiencies. If we must make hydrogen to make the best of excess energy, as a last or only resort - then it makes most sense to use it locally, in agricultural or industrial or other local uses designed be versatile in this regard.  It does not make much sense to divert energy away from more efficient systems specifically to make hydrogen. That is deliberately choosing to waste energy in efficiency losses. 

Talking to just enough people with just enough cash to do it and show it

Good news is hard to suppress. Trying to convert the opinions of the globe to any one vision of energy application is essentially a hiding to nothing. We are all to varying degrees stubborn first and sensible later. However, do something that works locally well, with benefits of cost and impact that appeal to customers, and try stopping the news from getting out. 

That should shift our emphasis from feeling a need to disseminate some evangelistic energy message to the masses, and rather to showing the potential rewards (and risks) of an experiment to a few investors that are equipped with the resource (cash) to help put it into practice at progressively larger scales - following any smaller scale successes. We don’t need to convert the world to our way of thinking – we just need to persuade enough to activate a scalable demonstration project. That, on any success, will take care of the publicity issue by itself.

The trail-blazers – and the power of a scalable demo

Now I am no engineer, and I am dependent for understanding the subtleties of engineering solutions on people who are generous in their open discussion of these things. I try to learn from them, and probably on occasion get the wrong end of the stick, so please blame me not them if on occasion I do so. I am not implying they agree with me – they most likely often don’t. These people are professional engineers, and I am at heart a geologist.

However, what I do also like, and have, in my capacity as a geoscientist, is an appreciation of the demonstration project. Something that shows a concept for real, warts and all, in a real place with real people, in a real project. That has a reality and an eloquence that beats any words. Such demonstration projects might not always work first time – but they do serve to highlight where the real pinch-points and bottlenecks are - usually constituting a mixture of the foreseen and unforeseen. 

If they do work, then fantastic. Conversely, even if success is only partial, then they serve to provide sensitivity analysis – helping us understand the things that are most important to modify next - to achieve greater future success.

In this regard, let me offer an example - Arno Evers, and recommend a tour through Arno’s extensive website to give yourself an appreciation of his experience in the field of energy optimisation: (https://www.hydrogenambassadors.com/). Despite his years of experience with hydrogen, Arno has come to see the many limitations and caveats of hydrogen over the years and has seen fit to evaluate the best options for a local project in the Philippines that does not use it. Take a look at his Sunny Houses website: 

https://www.sunnyhousessamalisland.com ,

Here you can see Arno putting the philosophy of optimising energy options around a place, into practice in this scalable demonstration project. To encourage us all to come see for ourselves, Arno places less technical detail there – but if you chat to him about it, you will start to glean more about what he is up to. 

This is self-financed, without burden to any taxpayer.  It is about maximising, optimising, local energy sources and minimising the costs of distribution – keeping an open imaginative mind about what the best energy sources are, and having a go at proving it can be done in practice. 

I haven't been there myself, and I’m not enough of an engineer to offer a detailed technical critique, but what I do recognise is the essence of a demonstration project. Not just that, but someone putting into practice the learnings of an engineering lifetime, into a practical project to test local energy use potentials, centred not on a method, but on the resources of that place. That approach appeals. Humbly, I suggest we could do with more like projects like it right now. 

One man went to mow

I’m not here to spin some idealistic message that ignores the realities of each of our days. Yet I perceive the following:

• We can’t keep expanding energy use at the rate we are.
• The fact that we have, over the past century, gotten used to constant energy expansion doesn’t remove the fact that it is a historical anomaly based on a long-lived hydrocarbon and combustion based windfall that has to change.
• Energy use decrease needs to play an important role in our future energy strategies.
• That doesn’t mean a return to the dark ages, just being cleverer with what we have.
• It also means not always assuming that high tech. equals better, though sometimes it might.
• Using local energy sources better has to be a part of the energy plan, recognising distribution distally over locally always has costs and compromises involved.
• Though I am happy to be proven wrong, big energy is likely to still be necessary and wherever it is, efficiency will be an imperative.
• Converting more efficient energy provision into less efficient doesn’t make sense where we can access (with acceptable impacts) the materials to construct the more efficient.
• Low efficiency energy provision can make sense when the use is local, not involving construction of large distribution networks, and when the alternative is no usage at all.
• The tensions between unutilised energy sources, efficiency (including amounts of distribution and storage), raw material extraction costs and impacts, wastes, and recycling potentials, influences what is best in any one place. We have to look carefully at each of these wherever we are, to figure out the best approach.
• Scalable demonstration projects are better than oratory.

Mowing our energy meadow

Nobody likes a bully and we’re not looking for a cult

Most likely, we do not have very easy options ahead of us, but neither is it impossible. 

We do however, have a need to ask ourselves more habitually, whether we can’t mow our meadows differently. Even, shock, horror, sometimes by hand or by foot or by (even more shock and horror) – sharing things. This, rather than requiring a nuclear reactor and electrical distribution grid to allow us to do it more comfortably.  Those things may well have their place, but if so, let’s focus them on the things that really can’t be done in any other way, and voluntarily put our hands and feet to work on being energetically cleverer in our own places.

I’m not suggesting that everybody rushes out and buys a push mower, or that we feel burdened by this issue every waking moment of every day. The key exercise is in acquiring the habit - asking of ourselves, and within our local communities. We all know that nobody likes sudden impositions or being bullied into having to do stuff – look at the “yellow-vest” riots in Paris in 2019 following sudden government fuel tax increases designed to impede fossil fuel use. That instant regulation tactic backfired spectacularly. Likewise, most of us are not in the market for joining some green cult where we live in mud huts and reject anything technological.

For the foreseeable future the “big” stuff will continue to play a role and central government will have to continue co-ordinating that.  As we have seen, where big is involved and where national distribution networks are unavoidably involved, the emphasis has to include maximising efficiency and not diverting precious energy to less efficient uses. 

Attractions of “the local” aren’t limited to the pub

La Vida Local

The real interesting bit though comes at local government, and in individual local buildings, and even individual rooms or individual commute levels. Asking ourselves what can be done at lots of little levels. The merit of this may be less in the overall impact of those things, than in the thought-habit it generates. Where things may be more important is when we all make those larger investments in our own lives – properties, vehicles, livelihoods.  If we have not gotten into the habit of integrating energy questions at the little levels, the chances of us doing it at those bigger investment decisions are less.  

The issue of course is that often these things are not without cost – especially in older houses, and all of us have had a challenging year. So it’s not about beating ourselves up for not fixing everything instantly, it’s more about changing the direction we face, even if the number of steps we can take straight away is limited. This is not about a New Year’s resolution for January 2021, it’s about an ongoing life choice for ourselves and our kids.

Integrating energy use into the mix of those decisions is what we, and our local authorities can start to do more as the local based energy options proliferate. This is most easily instigated in new builds and new area commercial, residential, and industrial developments. The hope is that we don’t need to be bullied into that integration of energy into our own thought-mix but can see with time, the benefits to ourselves and our kin of doing so. 

In mature economies with lots of existing infrastructure, there are challenges and costs involved with retrofitting new options – so in managing expectations we have to know that retrofitting these new solutions will take time – but here civic and local authorities can lead by example on their own properties - if resourced to do so. There is nothing like working successes to tell the story – and where on occasion some things fail, a demonstration that the help exists to put it right. Emplacement of regulations to stop any unscrupulous “cowboy outfits” from taking advantage is also helpful. 

There are few guarantees of success for things we do in life, however it is far easier to guarantee failure if we ignore certain fundamental truths. One of those fundamental truths is that we can use less energy as individuals, communities, societies, and a species, if we put our mind to it. There are compelling reasons to put our mind to it. 

What can we keep up?