Saul Griffith on Energy Literacy O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2008 Tuesday, March 4, 2008 Marriott Marina, San Diego, CA Notes by Cory Doctorow doctorow@craphound.com -- http://en.oreilly.com/et2008/public/schedule/detail/1614 The world has known, calculable amounts of energy are available. Let’s take a science (physics and chemistry based) look at all of the earth’s energy resources, both stored (nuclear and fossil fuels) as well as renewable (solar, wind, wave, geothermal, tidal, wave, photosynthetic). Looking at the sizes of each of these resources and comparing them to humanity’s energy consumption is far from depressing. Although humanity uses a lot of energy, there are very large sources of non-carbon producing energy that can be tapped to meet our needs. -- "If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst" - Hardy It's impossible to talk about energy because we don't know enough about it People who wrote about energy and tech usually considered crazy (Plato, Thoreau) -- Big and Small of It There's a big story and a little story * Big: Impersonal story of numbers and stats * Small: Personal -- Global Step 1: CO2 = Climate * Understand that CO2 is implicated in climate change. Step 2: Choose temp at which we'd like to stabilize Earth Step 3: Figure out how much carbon we can release annually to achieve above Step 4: Calc how much energy you can get from trad fossil fuels to make that much carbon Step 5: The defecit needs to made up with sustainable sources Step 6: Look at energy engineering challenges for 5 -- Individual: Calculate carbon footprint Compare with others' Design a life with a sustainable carbon footprint -- CO2 is real: April 1896: Fourier and others identify CO2 and carbon link Ice-core data and direct measurement all paint picture of massive CO2 increase -- Where is the carbon we're talking about? 40K gigatons in ocean Atmo: 600 GtC Veg: 700 GTC Soils: 3000 GTC Accessible fossil fuels: 1600 GTC The upside: we can probably force some out of the atmo; this wouldn't be true if the oceans were more acidified Net +5 GtC into atmosphere, +2 into oceans -- Temp change is real: Temp changes around world in last 25 yrs of 20th C: overall warming trend is harder and harder to doubt So what temperature should we choose? Some scientists have models with differing scenarios: * 12 competing teams, all struggling for same funding, great competition * This is why scientific method works * Rapid growth with fossil fuels leads to fast temp increase * Rapid growth with "balanced" fuels leads to moderator temp increase * Even very green approach ups the global temp by 2 deg Assume a 2 deg increase, then, as this is achievable -- What does 2C mean? Reports from BP and others are pretty conservative: 1.5 deg == 10% species lost, 3.5 deg 1-4 billion people in water shortage; 4.5 deg == entire cities and countries vanish But none of these account for the environmental consequences of these consequences, e.g., what happens when 10 million people leave a drowned city and go somewhere else (war, famine, etc) At 450 ppm CO2 temp goes up 2C. We have to accept 2GtC into oceans/year, even though ocean acidification has its own grave consequences There are long time-lags in the system -- CO2 is a lead indicator. Curve down the CO2 for 50 years, reap the rewards over 300 years. It takes centuries after CO2 stabilization to reap temperature stabilization -- we've never deployed this kind of foresight before 2C gives you 7.3 GTCO2 Which is 0.85 TW of coal, 1.9TW of gas, 3.8 TW of petrol, and 30 TW of nuclear (nuclear is not CO2 free) -- 30 TW is twice global consumption -- How much energy? Lifting an apple == 1 Joule -- lifing 40 apples from the ground to the table == 40 Watts; running your Apple laptop is 40 Watts. A human can generate about 40 W without getting tired. We consume 80W each just to be alive 1KW is a domestic kettle 1MW is a diesel loco/wind turbine 1GW is the Hoover dam 1TW how much power world consumed in 1890 -- How did we get here? 30-50 years after James Watt, we started burning coal, 30-50 years after Ford we started burning petrol, 30-50 years after Einstein we got nokes -- Power of me: Live in a small house, drive a hybrid, etc: * Flying 7.462 Watts/year * Electricity: 170 Watts/month * Drinking a daily energy drink or bottled water: 90 Watts/day -- Your life in lightbulbs: A 12KW lifesyle == 120 x 100W lightbulbs, burning 24x7 -- How does Saul fare? 13,907 Watts/year * Flew 105k miles, 7.5K watts * Drove 10,000 miles, 1491 W * Assorted trips in taxis, rentals, dune buggy, etc * House: 2 person detached house in the Mission in San Francisco: 597 W of gas, 135 W of electricity * Office: 18,400 sqft office, with 40 people: 400W/person/year * Buying stuff: 2300W: (car, NYTimes delivery, bottled drinks, ISP, waste disposal, textiles, etc) * Eating * Military: 1/300,000,000: 94W, nuclear missiles, White House heat Total is 14,000-25,000 -- The next Nobel in economics should go to the person who makes energy auditing easy -- How does Saul compare? * If the world is divided evenly, he should get 2291 Watts * He flies a lot fewer miles: 1 flight/year to NYC, 1 flight every 3 years to Aus, 1 every 5 years to Europe, 1 every 10 years to Hawaii (eliminate all unpleasant travel) * 2 trips/month to Alameda, 1 trip/month to investors, 1 trips/year to inlaws, plus some surfing * Become 6/7 vegetarian and local/organic (local/organic is disputable) * Buy 1/10 as much stuff, make it last 10X longer -- How much energy is there? * Finite energy from gravity, nuclear, tidal * 3.5TW from tidal * 25TW from water * All photosythesis is 90TW * Ocean is 62TW (only 3TW on coastal) * Geothermal: 32 TW -- Renewable energy sources require country-sized infrastructure * High density: Solar and wind * 2033: 3TW from nukes, 2 from fossils, 0.5 biofiels, 2 from solar photovoltiaic, solar therman: 2, wind: 2 * 100sqm of solar cells with socal cells every second for next 25 years * 50sqm of meters every second for next 25 years * 12 3MW turbines every hr * 1 new nuke every week * 3 100MW steam turbines for geothermal * 1 Olympic pool of algae every second (biofuels are just inefficient solar cells) -- Is this possible? * Yes, this is within the scale of what we did in the last 25 years * 110Bn alumninum cans/year in the US -- these could be turned into 200GW solar thermal mirrors -- turn Coke and Pepsi into solar thermal companies and its solved * Nokia + Intel + AMD have the capacity to do that much photovoltaic * GM + Ford can make that many turbines We have to do this now -- What can we do individually? * Energy footprints are depressing * Eat less and more healthfully * Exercise more (bike and foot) * Spend more time with family * Commute less * Do less biz travel * Get higher quality products This is all stuff we want od do -- and it improves our energy efficiency 10X -- Today, drink bottles have nutrition facts Consumption facts are important too -- it's how we make good decisions about our lifestyle * Tesco is doing this in the UK Calorie counting for joules consumed by living * Nokia, Apple, Ford don't have this information in a place where we can see it -- The hardest part might be turning off CO2 emitters * We managed to stop cutting down rain forests * But can we shut down the power plants?