New Zealand Engineering 1997 December

Features

Strategies for Saving the World

feature by Cathy Sheehan, editor of Energy-Wise News

Energy is part of a whole system. Several recent books acknowledge the links between energy, the environment and human development, providing colourful examples of how people can make better use of the resources available.

"Over billions of years a toxic stew of inorganic compounds has been transformed by cells into mineral deposits, forests, fish, soil, breathable air and water _ the foundation of our economy and of our healthy existence. With sunlight as the sole energy supply those natural resources have been created in growing, self-sustaining cycles _ the `waste' from one species providing nutrition for another. The only processes that we can rely on indefinitely are cyclical; all linear processes must eventually come to an end." - Karl-Henrick Robert, In Context.

Human beings have broken the loops of biological systems, creating linear use of energy and matter that go from raw resources to heat and materials that are discarded or lost, writes Canadian science communicator David Suzuki in The Sacred Balance - Rediscovering our Place in Nature (Allen & Unwin). "Often there are unanticipated consequences to the buildup of these wastes."

The Natural Step

Mr Suzuki quotes the example of Swedish paediatric oncologist Karl-Henrick Robert, who formulated a set of guidelines for sustainability. In his work, Robert was amazed by parents' overwhelming love for their children. He knew their concern for the environment was so much less intense, although many of the forms of cancer suffered by the children were possibly caused by environmental agents. He tried to find a way for people to relate to the environment in a more personal way.

Dr Robert became aware that in nature the utilisation of energy and resources is circular _ one species' waste product is another's opportunity. Human beings have changed that by breaking the circles and creating linear models of production in which material is taken from the earth, manufactured or used, and then ultimately discarded as waste.

He formulated his four "systems conditions" that are essential to sustainable societies into a thesis called "The Natural Step", which is now taught in all schools in Sweden and has been adopted by more than 50 Swedish corporations. It has also spread to other countries including the US, Britain, Australia and Canada. The principles represent a profound change in how we perceive our activities on the planet.

1. Nature cannot withstand a systematic buildup of dispersed matter mined from the earth's crust (minerals, oil etc).

2. Nature cannot withstand a systematic buildup of persistent compounds made by humans (eg. PCBs).

3. Nature cannot withstand a systematic deterioration of its capacity for renewal (eg. harvesting fish faster than they can be replenished, or converting fertile land to desert).

4. Therefore, if we want life to continue, we must (a) be efficient in our use of resources and (b) promote justice _ because ignoring poverty will lead the poor, for short-term survival, to destroy resources (eg. the rain forests) that we all need for long-term survival.

David Suzuki says fossil fuels are the result of a long process in earth's history, a legacy of countless generations of life that flourished and died with energy stored in the molecules of their bodies. It took hundreds of millions of years for this energy to accumulate and cook into coal, oil and gas, and during all that time these substances kept carbon out of circulation, helping to balance the proportion of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Now, in a flicker of an eyelash, relatively speaking, the work of ages is being undone.

Since the Industrial Revolution, we have suddenly become dependent on fossil fuels on a global scale; at current rates of use, we will reach the limits of oil deposits within a few short decades. Fossil fuels are finite, a one-time-only gift from the ancient life of our planet. During the lifetime of our species, they will never again be created.

As well as depleting most oil reserves within a few generations, we are returning carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at a rate that exceeds the capacity of natural recycling mechanisms to remove it. For a century or more our use of energy has altered the amount of global atmospheric carbon dioxide. Although we can detect the changes in atmospheric composition, our ignorance of all the factors affecting climate and weather is so vast that we cannot predict all the consequences of these changes.

Our use of energy in the industrialised world has given us comfort, economic security, mobility, food and the power to change earth to suit ourselves. It has also given us a Pandora's box of associated miseries: air pollution, soil erosion and environmental destruction.

Growth and development

In his book Energy, Environment and Development (Earthscan Publications), Jose Goldemberg sets out the intrinsic relationship between the three elements of the title. Jose Goldenberg is Brazil's former Secretary of State for the Environment.

He concludes energy is an essential ingredient of growth and development, which are the fundamental aspirations of people in the poor countries of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. However, such growth and development - irreversible features of our times - can be detrimental to the environment; thus there is a basic conflict between them.

In 1993, only about 30 percent of all the commercial energy consumed in the world (oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear energy and hydroelectricity) was used in the less-developed countries in which three-quarters of humanity lives. The remaining 70 percent was used by the populations of the industrialised countries, which makes up 25 percent of the world's population.

David Suzuki quotes David Pimental, writing in Natural Resources and an Optimum Human Population: "If all people in the world enjoyed a standard of living and energy consumption similar to the US average, and the world population continued to grow at the rate of 1.7 percent per year, the world's fossil fuel reserves would last a mere 20 years."

David Pimental outlines an economy based on the sustainable use of energy, land, water and biodiversity while achieving a relatively high standard of living, but steps on a heroic scale must be taken immediately with a view to reducing both use of fossil fuels and population. His plan includes massive collection of solar energy, soil and water conservation and a sustainable level of population. He estimates this at three billion humans. Earth's population is currently almost six billion. His vision talks about focused effort, conserving energy and sharing it out fairly.

Practical solutions

The Factor Four approach (doubling wealth while halving resource use) is a catch-phrase coined by authors Ernst von Weizsacker, Amory B Lovins and L Hunter Lovins in their book of the same name published in June 1997. Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins are vice-president and executive director of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Colorado, USA, and Ernst von Weizsacker is president of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy in Germany.

They list 50 cases of practical ways to get more value from the resources we use.

They write: "In the past, progress was the increase of labour productivity. We feel that resource productivity is equally important and should now be pursued as the highest priority. Progress must meet the criterion of sustainability."

The book is an introduction, description and call to action on behalf of the opportunities in advanced resource efficiency. It shows practical, often profitable ways to use resources at least four times as efficiently as we do now. Or to put it another way, it means we can accomplish everything we do today as well as now, or better, with only one-quarter of the energy and materials we presently use.

Here are seven good reasons for resource efficiency, from Factor Four.

1. Live better - with more efficient lighting systems and refrigerators, better factories, efficient vehicles and buildings and efficiently grown crops.

2. Pollute and deplete less. Wasted resources pollute the air, water or land. Efficiency combats waste and thus reduces pollution.

3. Make money. You don't have to pay now for the resources that aren't being turned into pollutants, and you don't have to pay later to clean them up.

4. Harness markets and enlist business. Much resource efficiency can be implemented in the marketplace, driven by individual choice and business competition.

5. Multiply use of scarce capital. The money freed up by preventing waste can be used to solve other problems.

6. Increase security. Competition for resources causes or worsens international conflict. Efficiency can reduce international sources of conflict over oil, cobalt, forests, water _ whatever someone has that someone else wants.

7. Be equitable and have more employment. Wasting resources is the other face of a distorted economy that increasingly splits society into those who have work and those who don't. Either way, human energy and talent are being tragically

mis-spent. Businesses should sack the unproductive kilowatt-hours, tonnes and litres rather than their workforce.

Factor Four provides 50 examples of at least quadrupling resource productivity. They include:

Superwindows and large-office retrofits. Superwindows use invisible, transparent high-tech films to sort out visible from infrared (heat) radiation. The visible light goes through; the infrared is reflected away. In 1988, the Rocky Mountain Institute studied for then-Governor Clinton the potential for saving electricity in Arkansas. Added onto a typical old, wooden, single-family house, a package of about 20 carefully chosen measures could save 77 percent of the annual and 83 percent of the peak electricity while paying for itself in only three years. The key was to add heat-blocking superwindows right over the existing windows - unshaded single panes of clear glass.

On a larger scale, a major corporate owner was renovating a 20-year-old, 13 storey, 18,587 sq m, all glass office tower near Chicago. Its construction was standard early-1970s curtainwall. The Rocky Mountain Institute calculated that replacing the windows with superwindows would insulate three times as well, let in six times as much daylight and block unwanted solar heat so effectively that, together with efficient lights and office equipment, the cooling load could be cut nearly fourfold. The owner could replace the whole HVAC system with a better-designed version nearly four times as efficient. Peak electricity demand would fall by 76 percent, and annual electricity use would fall by at least 72 percent. The building would set a new standard of comfort, quiet and beauty. Operating costs would fall by US$12 per square metre per year. For various reasons, the owner carried out a poor-quality retrofit and then couldn't find tenants and had to sell the building at a discounted price _ an opportunity wasted.

Super-refrigerators. The main failing in most refrigerators is their insulation. Insulation has been kept thin to make the inside of the refrigerator bigger without making the outside bigger. Compressors have been inefficient, often mounted beneath the food compartment and producing heat which must be removed. Advances in refrigerators mean they can now use 86 percent less energy than the 1972 US norm. In 1972, the average model sold in the US used 3.36 kWh a year for each litre of volume. By 1987, when efficient standards came into force in California, this had fallen to 1.87 kWh a litre-year. In 1990, a new Federal standard prohibited the sale of models worse than 1.52, and the best mass-produced model used only 1.32. Ever since 1988, Gram in Denmark has been producing better-insulated refrigerators using only 0.45 kWh per litre a year.

Lighting. One-fifth of all electricity used in the US goes directly into lighting - which reaches one-quarter when we add the energy used to take away the heat of the lights. Better lighting equipment and lighting design techniques can save more than 90 percent of lighting energy very cost effectively, while enabling people to see much better.

Office equipment. An inefficient modern desktop computer and screen use electricity at a rate of 150 watts when they're turned on. However, portable computers use only a few watts.

Fans, pumps and motor systems. Singapore engineer Lee Eng Lock designs air conditioning systems which use only 0.61 kW per ton of cooling (one ton means removing heat at the rate of 3.52 thermal kW). Most engineers would count themselves lucky to use only 1.75 kW of electricity for a ton of cooling. Outgoing air from a big building is used to pre-dry the incoming air. Says Lee: "Like Chinese cooking. Use everything. Eat the feet."

Lee's supply fans use not the normal good practice 0.60 kW/t but only 0.061 kW/t. His chilled-water pumps use not 0.16 but 0.018 kW/t - 89 percent less. His condenser-water pumps, which move heat out of the chillers, use not 0.14 but 0.018

kW/t - 88 percent less. These energy savings come from common sense, whole-system engineering, healthy scepticism about traditional practice and rigorous application of accepted engineering principles often ignored. Above all, from ruthlessly eliminating friction wherever it can be found.

Conclusions

Jose Goldemberg says that if, during the next few decades, the industrialised countries and lesser developed countries continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels as their primary energy supply, regional and global environmental problems such as acid rain and greenhouse warming (caused increasingly by developing countries) will be a serious cause for concern for the industrialised countries. It is in their own interests to avoid being held to ransom on environmental matters by what happens outside their borders. He believes lesser-developed countries are important theatres for innovation and "leapfrogging"- bypassing the energy-wasting technologies now rejected by the developed countries.

Say the Factor Four authors: "Countries engaging in the efficiency revolution become stronger, not weaker, in terms of international competitiveness.

"This is not only true for the industrialised countries of the North. It is even more valid for China, India, Mexico or Egypt - countries that have a great supply of inexpensive labour but are short of energy. Why should they learn from the US and from Europe how to waste energy and materials? Their journey to prosperity will be smoother, swifter and safer if they make the efficiency revolution the centrepiece of their technological progress."

Jose Goldemberg believes the large-scale introduction of renewable energy will not take place easily, because of lack of competitiveness with conventional energy sources. He says that despite energy conservation efforts, all sources of energy will be needed. Ways will have to be found to promote development while minimising, but not completely avoiding, environmental problems.

Says David Suzuki: "We became dependent on fossil fuels very recently. Now that we understand the repercussions of the finite nature of oil and gas and the buildup of greenhouse gases when we use too much, we can turn our creative energies to finding alternatives, especially by harvesting the energy flooding onto Earth from the sun.

"It will take time to wean ourselves from our current patterns of energy use, and we can extend that time by becoming much more efficient, stretching our reserves and reducing our use of effluent gases and our wastes.

"Hypercars are capable of travelling 150 kilometres on a litre of gas and could allow us to continue to use vehicles with greatly reduced ecological impact. This could buy time for the design and construction of living spaces for most of humanity that eliminate the need for cars altogether. Greater efficiency in manufacturing processes can reduce energy and materials use by a factor of four, while conservation through reduced consumption can solve the ecological problems and increase equity. The potential is there. What is needed is the will."