Energy Project Update

When I was about 12, I did a school summer project on Energy. It surpassed my previous year's project on plastics, both in interest and the number of "Good Show Ups" that it generated. Don't ask me what a good show up is, but we were awarded them for good school work, and I think I got four, the maximum, for this project.

What I found particularly exciting was that humans were on the brink of a new era of harnessing the freely available energy around us, rather than the polluting and finite fossil fuels on which we had become dependant. Well, that was 27 years ago, and I'm pleased to announce that now... we really are on the brink of a new era of harnessing the freely available energy etc. Possibly. That is if we manage to survive long enough.

I'm quite a frugal person, I suppose, having lived on meagre incomes for much of my life. I eat well, but I tend to buy secondhand clothes, and rarely splash out on new things. Perhaps my experience of feeling quite well-off as a student is not typical, but I really did, especially compared to being a gardener. In any case, if I am presented with opportunities to have something that I want for free, I tend to take it. That is, of course, if it is legal, although at various times I have allowed for some creative interpretation of this term.

So it struck me, even as a privileged public schoolboy, that using the freely available sources of energy such as the sun, the wind and the waves, was a no-brainer. Of course now that we know how to extract energy from totally renewable sources we will. But we didn't then. At least not on the kind of scale that I expected. At present, only 1.2% of UK electricity is generated by renewables. Ok, so our sunlight isn't the strongest in the world, but we have plenty of wind, waves and currents to take advantage of. What's happening in the UK? Makers of wind energy technology are closing factories! Why? They (Vestas) blame the nimbys. (Not in my backyard? You won't have a backyard if we don't do something soon.)

I don't want to get political, particularly, but I love that picture at the top, from the picketing Vestas workers.

Anyway, things are brightening up a bit, particularly in the energy-hungry States. Obama is pushing for reform in various areas, electricity generation and transmission among them. Solar thermal and high voltage DC transmission (video by John O'Donnell, energy and climate entrepreneur) are old technologies with fresh paintjobs and could go a long way to meeting the US's needs. The UK is committed to 15% energy generation from renewables by 2020, actually that's a European guideline. It is way behind almost all other European countries, Germany is over 10% already, and Scandinavian countries and Switzerland are much further ahead. (Bundles of EU statistics.)

To round off, one more little bit of data from the EU website (link as above):

Oil (in barrels)

• Total world reserves Jan. 1st 2009: 1206780968626

• World usage per second: 986

• Estimated date of exhaustion: 16:36 Oct 22, 2047