Sustainable Energy

There has been a lot of new developments in energy . The stakes are rising at every step in the energy supply chain. There are both competing technologies at the micro level and competing paradigms at the macro level so it is good to remain clear on the basic principles.

I am writing a detailed paper to help me and perhaps others understand the high level issues that have an impact on sustainable energy. This is a start of a framework for gaining understanding. I am interested in hearing from others with regards to whether this is a good framework - or whether they have seen others :

1. Demand for energy - expanding population, consumption habits, and legislation.
2. Supply of various types of energy - Oil, Coal, Gas, new bio fuels, renewable energy sources etc. This also includes the impact that Peak oil will have and the various conversion technologies that are emerging (ie for converting gas to electricity)
3. Distribution of energy - smart grids, existing incumbent infrastructure and managing supply variability
4. Storing energy - battery technologies
5. The impact of legislation on demand, supply, distribution and storage
6. Embodied energy in supply chains

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Can we change?

Is changing society simpler than we thought ? The guys at Radiolab provide some food for thought that may implicate an elegant solution.



There is a brilliant podcast called Radiolab that you should check out if you have not already. The release on the 20/10/2009 entitled the "New Normal" (an expression that I happen to think is quite annoying). Despite the title the concept of this podcast is great - it is about the capacity of humans and animals to change. Amongst other things it explores concepts of changing people using examples such as a troop of baboons, a transvestite in a small town to investigate ideas such as :

1. Could breeding alpha-males out of our society solve many of our issues ? This was demonstrated via some changes that occur ed to a troop of baboons where the number of alphamales was significantly decreased. Basically they started playing nice - sharing, caring, and welcoming new males into the troop.

2. Is change a matter of enabling slow incremental pushing of norms by existing, trusted members of a society. The example that was used was a guy in a small US town who slowly aclimatised people to his transvestite leaning. He was so successful at this gradual introduction to change that he was eventually elected mayor.

How does this relate to sustainability? As per an earlier blog of mine "Social Sustainability" , change is the most critical concept for success in sustainability - no matter how strong the ideas may be, there will be nothing more significant than changing mindsets. This is not only vital- it is also incredibly difficult.

These types of theories make us think about change - perhaps it is simpler than we thought? Perhaps it is about the sensible, socialised amoung society slowly influencing change over time and managing and socialising alpha males?

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World Parliament for Climate Change?

Is the answer to driving real action on Climate Change and other sustainability issues a World Parliament?



I have been reading the Age of Consent which tackles the concept of the establishment of a world parliament. It seems that many of the worlds most challenging sustainability issues could be best served by this type of forum. He deconstructs the existing UN/World Bank/IMF structure. He points out (rightly) that these structures are all flawed as they are not democratic. In fact, he points out that our international system is an anarchic system - which has unelected nations making decisions based on self interest.

His ambition is to bring together a parliament that is globally and democratically elected by the people of the world - with a weighting for populations where the governments are democratically elected. The major advantage of such a parliament in his view is that it would carry more clout than the existing structures as it is truly democratic - thus exerting more pressure on individual governments to implement its policies.

This is a lofty goal and I am not sure if achievable. My step mother Jane Woodruff (who runs a major NGO) pointed out that this type of mass activism has only ever worked previously on the basis of particular issues, where the population has consensus. An example was the movement that drove women to get the vote (Womans Sufferage).

Interesting question is whether we should, in fact be focusing on global parliament that sits only on particular issues - such as Climate Change?

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Feeding ourselves sustainably

Food goes to the heart of the sustainability debate. We have other needs however food and water are really the things that are undeniable. This post is going to focus on food. So how are we going to feed ourselves?



The 1990 Farm Bill in the US defined sustainable agriculture as balancing human needs, the needs of the environment, resource inputs, and the needs of the farmers themselves. This is a reasonable definition in a debate where definitions seem to be part of the challenge. I think it is important to look at this from a macro perspective- at the level where the world is one system (including both developing and developed nations). At this level what does sustainability look like?

A recent Ted presentation by Carolyn Steel- -"How food shapes our cities" put forward some incredible facts:

1. 80% of the worlds food production is managed by just five multinationals.
2. It takes 10 calories to produce every calorie we consume in the west.
3. Half the food produced is thrown away
4. 1 billion people are obese while a further billion starve

These types of statistics put the debate into some form of context. The problem is not one of over population, but like many of these issues - it is a problem of consumption.

One of Carolyn Steels main point was that cities were once constrained by food - they could only be as big as they could be fed. It was the point at which cities become emancipated from agriculture that things really started to change. She believes that we need to re-establish the connections between our cities and agriculture. She sees a future where food is the catalyst for changing the way we operate.

A recent article on GRIST looked at the role of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) in the US in framing the future of agriculture. There is a strong belief that research is key to understanding how we can manage our future. The difficulty here is that this is just another lobby driven debate. GRIST believe that Independence is one of the most critical issues here.

Some key issues I identified in the GRIST article and others include :

1. What is happening the nutrients in our food?
2. How to farm energy efficiently?
3. Desire to develop comparative studies across different farming systems
4. Climate mapping to determine prioritisation of crops over grazing
5. General impact analysis on carbon impacts of various farming types
6. Reducing obeisity
7. Changing community agriculture from lifestyle amenity to necessity for survival
8. Replacement sources for nitrogen fertilisers
9. The role of bio tech and genetic engineering
10. The role of organic farming
11. Should the third world farm efficiently or for the long term? Many (such as this article from Seattle Times)suggest that although yields improve by using modern fertilizers- it can lead to typical cycles of debt dependency.
12. How do we stop our food from becoming toxic?
13. How do we avoid waste and more effectively distribute surplus?


This is clearly a complex debate, and one which needs to be carefully balanced. I think if we go back to some of the first principles of the sustainability movement we can put this into context :

1. The developed world needs to consume less. This is the first and simplest solution. Obesity is not fun for anyone and it is certainly not equitable or sustainable.

2. We need to see food as a global problem and a basic human right. We need to develop agricultural systems that cater to production from this context.

3. We need to remove the global monopoly on production and its influence on agricultural research. This is one area where we need the absolute facts - devoid of bias.

4. We need to be open to technological solutions, but only within a context of life cycle analysis of impacts of farming and not at the exclusion of existing organic techniques if they are more sustainable and realistic

5. We need to look at maximising utilisation of arable land globally , and we need to look at how this may be effected by climate change and have sensible mitigation plans

6. We need to integrate agriculture into our cities and surrounds over time but only if it is not at the expense of over-arching sustainability strategies

Overall - once we accept this as a global problem we need to establish a global system for where we locate agriculture, how we manage it, how we distribute it, how and we manage demand, how we manage waste.
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Solar City

Wall St Journal on the potential for Solar Cities. The proposition is that a city could provide for peak energy for a city on its hottest days. Currently the cost of implementation in is not quite there.
I made the suggestion on the blog that they could combine major project financing with individuals who want to do solar installations for themselves. The utility could set up a project based company that could roll-out the installation and give equity and cheaper energy to those who are willing to invest in their own installation. Read more!