The fact that there are several solar panels on our roof has, of course, several reasons. On this page I’ll try to explain why this subject interests me so much.

I think that, as a society, we have several problems in the area of our energy supply. The following problems are, I think, the most important ones, in the order of importance as I see it:

1. We are running out of fossil fuels, with ‘running out’ in a broad sense
2. Increasing scarcity of fossiel fuels have several nasty consequences
3. Both the extraction and use of fossil fuels have a negative impact on the environment
4. The CO₂ emissions from the use of fossil fuels probably have a negative impact on climate change

1) We are ‘running out’ of fossil fuels

The words ‘running out’ are intentionally between quotation marks, because fossil fuels started running out when the first barrel of crude oil and the first cubic metre  of natural gas were extracted from the ground.

It’s becoming ever more clear that the point in time is rapidly approaching where are all easily and cheaply accessible supplies of petroleum and natural gas get more and more depleted. Fossil fuels have such a diverse usage that’s it’s very important to seriously look into alternatives before the search for those alternatives itself is hindered by a lack of cheap energy.

Renewable sources of energy will not be ably to fully replace fossil energy sources in the near future, as it’s not possible to manufacture plastics of fertilizer from solar- or wind power, but every barrel of oil or cubic meter of natural gas that is not burned in a power plant or car engine can be used to manufacture durable products.

See for more information on this ‘Peak Oil‘ ().

2) The fact that fossil fuels get ever more scarce has some nasty consequences

The population of this planet is growing rapidly while the amount of available (fossil) energy is dwindling. Besides that, humanity is extremely dependent on those fossiel fuels for very nearly everything we do. Transport, heating, communication, food production, medicin production, the list goes on and on. You don’t need to be extremely smart to understand that this will have to go wrong.  In which way, no one knows, but I think that it’s safe to assume that two consequences are likely: a sharp reduction in average living standards and probably resource wars over the last remaining oil and gas wells.

Deposits of fossil fuels are not distributed evenly along the earth’s surface, but happed to be concentrated in areas of the world which are among the least stable: Middle-East, Western Africa, Russia. These countries are not always friendly to the west, and the huge profits on the sales of fossil fuels keep some fairly extreme regimes in power. Russia, for instance, has shown several times that it doesn’t consider itself above using their stocks of natural gas as a means op putting pressure () on other countries.

Renewable sources of energy cannot take away the dependency on fossiel fuels completely in the near future, but the larger the part of our energy that comes from those sources, the softer the ‘blow’ will be.

3) The recovery and usage of fossiel fuels have a negative impact on the environment

The effects that fossil fuels have on the environment are generally easy to point out. During recovery and transport there is substantial loss of product (either during accidents or as part of normal procedures). The stuff the remains after burning or otherwise using fossiel fuels are often dangerous and not always processed in a responable way.

Oil platforms catch fire, (), pipelines spring leaks (during accidents () or blown up by ‘terrorists‘ ()), oil tankers sink, etc. When coal is burned, dangerous substances like mercury and uranium end up in the atmosphere is large quantities.

Many of these polluting substances accumulate, end up in the food chain and, eventually, in us. A sharp reduction in the use of fossiel fuels can reduce this pollution.

4) The CO₂-emissions from the use for fossil fuels may contribute to climate change

For the past few year climate change change has been in the news more and more, and many people consider it to be the main reason to look for alternatives to fossil fuels. Movies like “An inconvenient truth” () contribute to that process. I don’t go along with that completely – yet. The climate and weather systems of earth are extremely complex and although I’m not a scientist I can see that one can prove anything with numbers, whether it’s true or not (as in lies, damned lies and statistics).

I accept that the climate is changing, and that should not be surprise. Through time, the climate has gone through many large changes, apparently that’s normal. I think it’s quite hard to conclusively prove to which degree the current change can be attributed to human activities. One report claims that a rise in temperature was preceded by a rise in CO₂-concentration, while some other report claims that a rise in temperature was followed by a rise in CO₂-concentration. In short: confusion abounds.

Having said that, the fact is that there is a chance the human activities contribute to climate change. If a reduction in CO₂-emissions can do anything substantial and useful to those emissions and their consequences remains to be seen, but it’s probably worth the trouble to at least give it a try. Switching over from burning fossil fuels to renewable energy sources will nearly automatically reduce the CO₂-emissions.

A changing climate, whatever the cause, has the potential to create difficult circumstances for humanity, such as more severe weather, redistribution of precipitation and temperature zones, etc. If that happens, and we also have an energy crisis at the same time, depriving us of the energy we need to adapt to the changing circumstances, the future looks rather bleak.

Solution

So, those are the problems as I see them. But is there a solution? Every once in while I’m asked if I really think that those solar panels on our roof are going to save the world. The answer is – of course – no, they won’t.

If we don’t want our energy supply to become a big problem we will have to do much more than we’re doing now. In my opinion, we basically need to do two things:

• Make massive progress in energy efficiency, a lot of energy is wasted now
• Generate the energy that is still needed in a renewable and sustainable way

Conserving energy and increasing energy efficiency is very important. Energy which isn’t used doesn’t have to be burned or generated, either from fossil fuels or renewable sources. Therefore, in my opinion, conserving needs te precede generating energy from renewable sources.

The distribution of energy use of a ‘average’ western country is approximately as follows:

- 30% transport (automobiles, trains, airplanes, etc.)

- 30% industry (factories, etc.)

- 20% residential (heating electrcity, etc.)

- 20% the rest (shops, street lighting, etc.)

It’s probably useful to start with the largest fractions: transport and industry. Saving energy in the transport sector is useful in two separate ways: not only is this sector a large fossil fuel consumer but it also runs almost exclusively on fossil fuels. Cars and lorries run on petrol and diesel and at this moment there are no large-scale affordable alternatives for that. So: please leave your car at home from time to time and travel by bicycle, on foot or by public transportation. If you really want to make difference: get rid of your car entirely. Avoid flying if you can because although flying is a very efficient method of travel, it’s easy and cheap to travel large distances, making it very easy to actually increase () your fossil fuel consumption.

To save much energy in the industry sector is tough: it’s an extremely diverse sector and obtaining large savings there will probably have large economic consequences. Probably the only way to substantially decrease the energy levels consumed by industry is to simply consume less stuff (and to switch to a smaller and a more local scale), but the industry will probably not see this as a ‘solution”  because our economy and society are set up for ever increasing consumption. The question is how long we can keep that up.

In the residential section a lot of energy can be saved, and in most cases quite easy, too. Most energy is used for heating and cooling, and it’s usually really easy to realise large energy savings with relatively low investments in that area. Things like improved insulation, double or triple paned glass, heat recovery systems can reduce the energy consumption for heating and cooling with tens of percents. When technologies like heat pumps and active/passive thermal solar energy are added is should be possible to reduce the energy consumption to 90% or more. It’s even possible, without much extra trouble and costs, to build houses which don’t require any externally supplied energy for heating and cooling at all.

Besides thermal energy there is of course electricity. Electricity consumption has, unfortunately, been rising steadily over the years. This is mostly due to the fact that people own and use ever more electrical devices, and these devices tend to use more and more power (large plasma televisions etc.). Increasinly, equipment can’t really be switched off, but keeps using electricity when on standby, wasted large amounts of electricity. By choosing more efficient appliances, like A+ class refridgerators, dishwashers, washing machines and energy saving lightbulbs enormous amounts of electricity can be saved. I hope there will be laws and rules in place soon which favor efficient equipment and eliminiate standby power consumption. With a focussed effort I think it’s possible to reduce the electricity consumption of the average household by 50% or more – without sacrificing comfort.

Besides reducing electricity consumption it’s also possible to generate renewable and clean electricity at home. Solar panels are one possibility, while small urban wind turbines are being developed. Micro combined heat and power (a central heating system which generates electricity from the waste heat) is being pushed by the old fossil energy suppliers, but I wonder how sustainable that really is. Natural gas is non-renewable fuel and although one of the cleanest burning ones, it still emits CO2.  On the other hand, this technology can extract more energy from a cubic meter of natural gas. All these decentralised methods of producing electricity depend on one common factor: for them to be attractive to consumers a solid feed-in compensation system needs to be in place. Although not necessary in the short term, increasing the amount of flow-produced electricity (sun, wind, water) on the grid will require some energy storage, because those will not always deliver electricity when it is needed.

In the category ‘the rest’ it’s possible to reduce the energy consumption in comparable ways to the other categories by pursuing efficiency and generating the needed amount as sustainably as possible. And, as in the other categories, change will have to come to both technology and behaviour.

This these thing sound overwhelming, don’t they? To be sure, a lot needs to be done before we’re rid of our addiction to oil, coal and natural gas. The technological changes are not the most difficult, although by no means easy. The most difficult thing will be the change in mentality that is absolutely vital for this change to happen. Many people have no idea how vulnerable our energy supply is to even the smallest interuptions, and equally have no idea how crucial it is to find sustainable solutions for this problem. It’s very important that information about this becomes freely available in the mainstream media, without scaring people. Scaring people does nothing to solve the problems in the long term.

And fortunately there is so much the average citizen can do: take a good, hard look at the insulation of your home, install energy efficient light bulbs, switch devices with standby consumption really off, leave your car at home more often (good for exercise as well!). In Dutch there’s the slagen “A better environment starts with you“, well, it might be time is replaced by “A more sustainable energy supply starts with you“.