The Smart Grid
Imagine in the near future an entirely different energy system, an energy system that is agile, intelligent, distributed, flexible, self-organizing, sensing, and sustainable. For example, a Future Smart energy system would be organized much like how the web network works. The Internet’s capabilities are based on a highly flexible and distributed network of networks that work together to optimize the performance and the access to information sources. The web self-heals, fixes, and enables, and machines communicate with machines to optimize performance, power, and connectivity to stream along our shopping, communications, media, banking, and health care. And a mash-up of game-changing innovations like nanotechnology used for storage, cognitive computers for managing complex energy calculations, sensors optimize energy traffic, and the mobile Internet all work together to contribute to the Smart Grid. Now that is a Future Smart path to a sustainable world.
If one part of the network breaks down, the network senses this and looks for another pathway. The design of the Internet as a distributed network of increasingly smarter systems that collaborate is at the core of how the Internet works. This not only drives the web traffic but also carries billions of simultaneous voice calls, data, and videos.
This is what the future of energy could be—a Smart Grid Network that is agile and connected to many different energy sources, both traditional fossil and renewable. The Smart Grid would be smart enough to sense in real time when and where the most cost-effective and abundant energy sources are to automatically identify and route the energy needed to billions of consumers on demand. Just as the Internet starts with one computer and builds exponentially to create a scalable, distributed, and global system of collaborative networks, a Global Smart Grid could do the same.
A Smart Grid refers to a class of technology that people are using to bring electricity delivery systems into the twenty-first century, using computer-based remote control, computer, and communications automation. These systems are made possible by two-way communication technology and computer processing that has been used for decades in other industries. They are beginning to be used on electrical networks, from the power plants to solar arrays and wind farms direct to the consumers of electricity in homes and businesses.
The big idea would be to combine both consumer and business energy generation with a mix of energy sources—renewable, green, fusion, electricity, and fossil fuel sources—to better gain a holistic control, a total-energy system’s view of both ends of the energy supply chain—supply and demand. This Smart Grid Network will transform energy in the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries by creating a more efficient, transparent, and productive energy architecture that can “learn” and “evolve.” The Smart Grid could predict what energy needs and where based on the Big Data analysis of billions of people’s behaviors and then forecast what, when, and where they will need energy to run their lives. But we have to build this.
This Is the Future of Energy
In the future of 2025 the Smart Grid will be linked to cloud computing, analytics, and Big Data of energy. This new future of Smart Grids will enable city-to-city, home-to-home, business-to-business, and nation-to-nation energy trading, commerce, and exchanges that will optimize the price and access to different energy sources for a more effective system.
Then when Smart Machines, AI, enhances the network performance by creating self-organizing capabilities, we will have an Evolutionary Network that manages energy locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. When evolutionary networks emerge that surpass the computer processing of today’s computers and even humans, we will have reached the endgame of energy global management. This future is coming.
You might ask: Why don’t we have this today? This certainly makes sense, and if we could build the Internet on this model, why not the energy system? The world needs more energy efficiency, given more demand and higher costs of energy. The answer is that there is no system that manages energy on the planet today because it has not been fully envisioned, designed, and built. In the near future this Smart Energy Grid will be the gatekeeper that captures, transmits, and distributes energy on the planet.
Today there is an antiquated energy grid in each nation and region of the world. But this is a patchwork of old-legacy systems that are not designed the way the Internet works. This older, slower, and inefficient energy system is not unified for performance or cost effectiveness. The amount of waste and inefficiency in what we have today, if captured, could light your city for decades. The global energy grid is based on a nineteenth-century model that was developed based on a mechanistic and industrial model more so than an information model.
If the Internet worked for transforming communications on the planet in less than a decade, why wouldn’t it work for energy? The answer is that the same logic applies. Better technology and innovations applied to fixing the energy problem is coming.
What Will Make the Smart Grid a Reality?
• A real-time network of 100 billion sensors in homes, offices, autos, and public transportation are all connected, sharing information on energy demands and supplies.
• The creation of a Big Data network of secure information about energy usage, generation, storage, geo-locations, sources, performance, and economics is matched up with consumer and business needs.
• Cloud Computing brings together all of the micro- and nano-grids in a city, community, region, nation, or continent to better manage the energy efficiencies of energy usage.
• Embedded AI automates the management of microgrids and provides cost-effective energy access.
• A series of networks link renewable and traditional gas and oil energy sources together for optimizing performance.
• Mobile Energy Management Intelligence senses, forecasts, and predicts what, when, and how much energy sources will be required so as to anticipate demand.
• Smart Machines will be developed to do this work, as they will be better at managing the efficient energy systems on the planet.
The Top Trends That Will Shape the Future of Energy
1. Renewable energy innovation will drive the long future of global prosperity, growth, and sustainability on the planet.
2. Smart Machines will be used to manage the energy grids, cells, and generation and to optimize renewable energy production for distribution.
3. Energy Security, having access to energy that is secure, available, and affordable, will shape energy futures and economics.
4. The development of a Global Carbon Trading marketplace, where companies, nations, and individuals can trade carbon, water, and energy credits, will fund the next generation of renewable energy innovations.
5. Wireless power downloaded from Energy Cloud Network will keep devices working anywhere on the planet.
6. Smart Grids, with an energy mix that is produced, captured, and stored on the local level, will transform energy resources.
7. Off-World Energy futures, moving into Earth’s orbit and methane mining on Moon, will offer new sources of renewable, large-scale, and abundant energy sources.
8. The demand for energy will be greater than the supply available due to the rise of new middle-class prosperity, population growth to 9 billion by 2050.
9. Creating a distributed marketplace where consumers can sell alternative energy they don’t use.
10. Upgrading the world’s electronic networks.
Our Shared Energy Future
We just need to get smarter—Future Smart—about how to harness and convert these other renewable energy sources into energy we can use. The good news is that humans have an excellent track record for converting matter into energy. We did it with oil, gas, steam, and water, so we can also develop the tools, innovations, and technologies to do it again with additional natural energy sources. The only thing missing from the future-of-energy narrative on the planet is inventing the right innovations to exploit renewable and sustainable energy sources.
While we are working on this Grand Global Challenge, there are traditional energy sources—fossil fuels mostly—that will continue to be part of the energy mix, whether we like it or not, for another forty to 100 years. And for every year that moves us closer to 2030, numerous innovations that can contribute to these next-generation energy sources will become more possible.
By 2030, if we are Future Smart, the energy mix will be reversed, with more renewables than fossil fuels. Every nation, every organization, and especially every entrepreneur should work toward building our sustainable future. We can do this. And, of course, we must. The demand drivers of the future, such as increased population, expensive energy, fossil fuels impact on public health, and the environment are reasons enough to focus on renewable energy.
The State of the World’s Energy
Uncertain. Unstable. Risky. Wasteful. Carbon dependent. These terms characterize the state of the world’s energy today. As a civilization, we have not been very smart about how we use energy. We rip it out of the ground or oceans, tear up the landscape to mine for coal, burn oil to fuel our cars and cities, and, in the process, incur climate change, pollution, and do not plan for the future. It is time to think about the future—let’s get Future Smart. This current illogic and resistance to change has to go. And in the near future it shall, I forecast.
Easy Energy typifies the last hundred years, when the technology to find it, mine it, or burn it was easy. It did not require advanced innovations. Easy Energy is not a smart strategy because it is often risky, polluting, costly, and, above all, not renewable. Once we mine or drill it, we are done; it is gone. There are more intelligent sources of energy generation to choose from that are renewable, abundant, and cheap as well as nonpolluting.
But the yields are not comparable, and this will require advanced technological innovations to make Smart Energy available. We are close. Fusion and moon mining may be further out in our future, but building grids, developing renewables that have high yields, both here on Earth and in space—it is all part of fueling the future. Smart Energy is coming fast.
Need for Clean Energy Now
You want to wrap your head around the concept that everything in our world is based on energy. Nothing works without energy. Every aspect of our lives, from health to work, creativity to war, innovation to nature, even our biology, economy, and DNA is dependent on energy. Without energy, nothing lives or can be sustained—not people, societies, or planets. Having an ample source of cheap and abundant energy is essential to all life on the planet today and into the future.
We need much more energy for billions of people to create a sustainable future. This is just not a negotiable global policy; we must, as a civilization, get this right, as it will have an enduring impact on our future existence on the planet. With ample access to energy, we have a thriving civilization. Without energy in abundance, there will be conflict, stress, and a lower quality of life.
This means that in order to forecast the future, in order to have a sustainable future—which I would define as a future that has a decent quality of life and is secure, productive, and offers a hopeful existence—you need to have access to more energy to meet the growing demands of the marketplace. And the energy sources we have been using, primarily fossil fuels, are (1) running thin, (2) costly, and (3) contributing to altering the climate to an extent that threatens our ability to survive.
In fact, an advanced civilization would not damage its natural resources like the air, water, and climate the way our civilization has. An advanced civilization would not mine and use nonrenewable energy if it had any negative effect on people’s health, which it does. This is not Future Smart. It is just not sustainable for the long term and could have devastating effects if not corrected sooner, but we shall get to that forecast.
The Energy Dilemma
Now, most of us understand the Energy Dilemma. The key driver of the future of energy is that demand will increase by 2 to 3 times by 2030. The world’s economy and society is dependent on oil and gas, hydrocarbons—fossil fuels. This dependence is not a sustainable strategy for the future. Oil, gas, and coal are not renewable sources of energy. They are costly and, though reliable, we need a new energy plan. It would not be realistic to forecast that for the next twenty years we are going to not use petro energy sources.
It is realistic to plan for a sustainable future that is dominated by renewables that will be cheaper, more accessible, and wiser to invest in. Another reason is that the geopolitics and economics of being an energy importer is not a preferred energy future for any nation.
For example, the United States will be winding down over the next decade a $700 million price per year on the oil it has been purchasing from OPEC over the past two decades. This reduction will be based on the shift to gas resources and renewables. The European Union is moving into the renewable direction, as is Asia.
We all need to move faster to head off population and productivity demands in the global economy. Economies need energy to grow. We need to focus on increasing the technology around renewables. Renewing the energy we need from sources that are consistent with life systems such as solar and wind as well as other sources reviewed here is Future Smart.
Meeting the One Hundred–Terawatt Future Challenge
I was giving a presentation, a briefing, to one of the leading energy companies in the world, to their board of directors, at their retreat. I stated that, given the enormous changes required to reduce carbon, move to renewables, conserve energy, and invest in the future, I doubted that today’s leaders had the courage, insight, or will to make those changes and become Future Smart. This did not go over well. This is one of those forecasts I hope I am wrong about.
I forecast we shall turn to what we do best—making new tools, designing innovations, and inventing our way out of the energy fix. We will fix energy, but we are going to all pull together to harness innovation to do it.
Now that we have that clear, you can grapple with the fact that with more people born, rising populations with increased needs will accelerate energy demand. I estimate that by 2050, with 9 billion people on the planet, there will be a 100% increase in demand for energy. Today we use about 1.3 quadrillion BTUs, or 1.4 million terajoules, of energy per day. As of 2014 we use about twenty terawatts of energy on the planet per year. We are going to need one hundred terawatts of energy by 2040. That’s five times the amount we use today.
We are not preparing fast enough to meet this challenge. We need new sources, new discoveries, and new incentives to conserve and manage the energy we have today. If not, the future will bring laws that restrict birth based on energy scarcity or even restrictions on transportation, travel, or mobility due to energy access. Energy rationing is a reality in much of the world today. Tomorrow it will be severe and constant unless we innovate quickly. The future will need five to ten times more energy than we use today, yet we are not providing adequate energy for over 2 billion people today.
Nobody is ready for this extreme future. This chapter is about what innovations could make a difference in creating the future of energy.
Thinking About the New Future
We need to think about our society, our world, and ourselves with a longer view. How will the next ten generations get their energy? What is the impact of our actions today on the future? What can we do to ensure that our great-grandchildren can benefit from having abundant and clean energy in the future? What are the actions we can take today to forge a future that is sustainable for the next five hundred years? These are the strategic questions we need to ask of ourselves, our leaders in the community, in both business and politics. We need sustainable energy policies for the long term, but we must have the courage to make changes and envision a bolder, different vision for energy if we are to thrive in the future.
Innovate Faster
If there is one megatrend that we cannot, as a civilization, continue without fixing and becoming Future Smart, its energy. We must learn to become Future Smart about energy and make a transition from fossil fuels to renewables faster than we are moving today. There is just too much risk to not innovate faster in creating new sources of renewable energy.
Energy drives every community, business, organization, and marketplace, big or small, throughout the world. Energy is the glue that enables civilization to continue, to be viable, and to endure. Yet traditional, carbon-producing energy is going to continue to affect public health and be a drag on progress toward making the earth sustainable. The requirements needed to accelerate the move toward renewable clean energy in order to offset traditional fossil fuels cannot be overestimated in importance.
If we do not move fast enough and learn to become Future Smart about alternative energy production to keep pace with global demand, the future will be a conflict-ridden and insecure world. We must take this seriously and press leaders in the private and public sectors to invest quickly and deeply in new renewable energy sources.
I recognize that any change in energy on the planet will require decades for it to make large significant changes. Many game-changing innovations, such as electric cars and solar, have, in a short period of time, demonstrated higher performance. I do not think we can afford not to invest in the future of energy beyond the dominance of petro energy. Obviously every government and even the oil companies, to their credit, recognize this shared global challenge and are working to be part of the solution.
The New Moon Race
The race to the moon is used here to remind us that humans can do amazing things when we put our creative minds to it. The race to the moon, the challenge thrown down by President Kennedy, has been used to acknowledge that when committed people collaborate, they can sometimes accomplish truly amazing things. Putting a man on the moon, the challenge that galvanized a generation, showed us that extraordinary accomplishments can be realized, no matter how crazy or how many unknowns and challenges confront us.
The innovative idea here is, of course, that if we could put a man on the moon, can’t we accelerate the innovations that will produce a clean and renewable energy future? And we can. But only committed people with a vision for a better future can design that future. We need a Moon Race to invent the future of energy. We need a Moon Race to prepare our civilization to meet the challenges of the future, which will be dominated by vast increases in an energy-hungry population that will outstrip today’s supply needs.
We must look to protect the security and progress of the future with energy that can be sustainable for much more globalized trade, commerce, and growth. Energy can be an accelerator or a drag on the future, depending on how much energy and what type of energy is available. The cost of energy, in terms of economics as well as on society, will require faster innovation in both managing carbon and providing renewable energy abundance.
Deep Space Probe 2050: The Da Vinci Explorer
Ever since the Consortium of Space Nations sponsored the deep-space exploration project, the results have been spectacular. Fusion propellant depots set up in the 2040s keep the network of explorers going ever deeper into space. Some, like the Zulu, are small, like those drones from the past that flew packages to customers’ homes and business.
The discoveries of new elements, metals, strange gases, and even primitive life forms have changed the very nature of our understanding of human biology and the cosmos. Now, I have conducted experiments that answer some fundamental questions about how the universe was formed and even who we are and where we humans may have come from.
We are star children, no doubt, as the experiments prove that our essential biochemistry comes from the stars. We have found no intelligent life as yet, but we are hoping and searching and exploring the outer rims of our galaxy.
Until my next transmission, this is the Da Vinci, signing off.
The Deep Future
One cannot fathom the future of energy possibilities without understanding that all of the trends forecasted in this book are pieces of a complex puzzle that fit together to shape a larger framework of factors, relationships, and interactions that create the infrastructure of the future. I call this the Deep Future. The Deep Future is the comprehensive total system of what the future of our reality may be—all of the trends woven together, including climate, energy, medicine, work, and technology, that shape how we, as a civilization, as a planet, and as humanity, will be in a future time.
This Deep Future is not just coming; our actions are actually creating, influencing, and shaping the architecture of this reality. We are shaping the future whether we are aware of it or not. Now, if you consider entire societies or corporations that have the power, capital, or resources to shape the future on a global or regional scale, then you can begin to grasp how big this game is.
Often something as mundane as what investments are being made in certain key energy areas can forecast what is coming next in many areas—energy is an example. Investments in clean energy such as solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal today will pay off in the future. Investments in the fundamental building blocks that will shape the energy future such as photovoltaic cells that will drive solar energy, batteries, robotics, cloud computing, and nano-science will make an impact in the future.
Top Energy Innovations by 2035
• Near-earth-orbit energy stations produce enhanced computer energy chips in space to increase capabilities and convert and transmit large raw energy sources such as methane, solar, and wind to electricity in the Smart Grid Network.
• Intelligent Automated Highway systems that use 100 percent renewable energy.
• Ambient Capture Energy Technologies that search, store, and transmit energy from passive and active sources.
• Solar arrays orbiting Earth beam energy back to Earth by attracting and converting solar energy to electricity.
• Self-assembling Nano-Makers, nano-machines that are programmed to produce energy from the automated manipulation of matter such as waste or water, will create local energy production units that, like microwaves, will sit in every home and business to generate energy for local consumption or to contribute to the Smart Grid.
• Solar paint turns every roof and surface into a solar panel by capturing the sun’s radiation, converting this energy to electricity, then sending this onto the smart grid for distribution or to be used for local consumption, house-to-apartment, town-to-city, car-to-bus, or school-to-hospital.
What Could Be: Top Energy Innovations by 2025
• The Web of Things is essential to connecting every solar panel to the smart grid, collecting, storing, and distributing energy, when required, around the city and around the world, using the Internet as the network.
• Carbon MegaTax program’s investments in clean-tech energy make up 40 percent of new clean energy production on the planet.
• The Right to Pollute Carbon Credits are finally canceled, with no more buyers.
• Wind-and ocean-based turbines generate 25 percent of all global energy use by harnessing the natural sea currents and wind to generate electricity.
• Sea Floor Methane mining produces energy for twenty cities by providing a methane energy production on the bottom of the ocean near every city.
• Fusion reactors generate a new energy capacity that fuels society by creating an entirely new source of nuclear energy—clean, safe, and renewable.
• Solar cells spawn a new Hive Mind of Smart Grids that self-assemble in every city, community, and home, generating 80 percent of the free energy from tax investments.
• Smart Machines design and manage 70 percent of the global energy distribution system using cloud computing, Big Data, and AI to benefit the energy needs of our civilization.
The Green Economy: 2035
The petro economy of today dominates energy usage on the planet. This petro economy generates millions of jobs, creates wealth, and provides stability and efficiency of markets. The infrastructure and investments in the petro economy are not just going to just go away unless there is a comprehensive energy plan to invest in renewables. The migration toward a Green Economy in 2035 should have started earlier in this century, so we must accelerate investments and research.
We must invest capital from the current petro economy into the Green Economy of tomorrow at a scale increased by one hundred times to meet the needs of the future. That is what’s missing today: we need to invest smarter, faster, and with more capital to actually create a new energy system. Nations that understand the value of a long-term plan, organizations that can help innovate us into this future, citizens who vote with this Green Economy in mind will make this future happen. The problem—and it is an enormous one—is that this Green Economy, based on clean technology, jobs, businesses, laws, and a new energy infrastructure, takes decades to build out.
There is tremendous efficiency in the energy market today, and this will be so in the future, except with an energy mix that includes a dominance of renewables for the long term. Without this long-term view, to transfer the efficiencies, capital, and innovation from today to accelerate tomorrow’s Green Economy, it will not happen.
Creating the Global Energy Grid: Networked Power
What would it take to create a new energy future, a future global energy grid? Let’s start by setting as a goal that we want to network, share, and deliver power anywhere, anytime for cheap—how do we do this effectively? We need a new source of power to harness that is low cost, plentiful, and renewable so we will never run out. Where can we look to find such an energy source?
The sun, seas, and research laboratories may help to unlock this Bright Energy Future. Now, we are not turning off petro fuels but rather creating a migration strategy over decades, moving from dominance of petro fuels to a broader energy mix with renewables. Unless there is a radical energy innovation that accelerates energy generation, this migration strategy is the likely forecast given the large trillion-dollar investment in jobs, infrastructure, equipment, and capital investment that the oil, gas, and coal producers worldwide have made.
This reality—the large hundred-year economic investment by the private and government sectors and the extensive social influence of petro fuels on civilization—is hard to change. It is not impossible, but it will take time, capital, and, above all, courage to plan ahead, to envision the possible—to be Future Smart.
Three Energy Futures
There is time to plan for a sustainable future for every nation on the planet if we get going now. There is not time if we wait for another ten years and then try to catch up. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to change or adapt quickly. The challenge is that many leaders lack the vision and courage to pivot into making this future happen. We need leaders who are Future Smart. They understand how to take the bold steps now to create the future that we need, that is best for society and for the planet. Leaders who think about and actually plan for the planet, who have a bigger picture in mind—these are the leaders we need to cultivate and shape our future. These are the leaders who will hopefully navigate a smarter future, when sustainability is at the top of the agenda for nations, organizations, communities, cities, and the planet.
In these three energy futures I forecast what possible future outcomes will occur based on planning, investment, and vision spent today. It is likely that all three futures will happen simultaneously. Africa, with the most resources but the most tolerance for chaos and ineffective leadership, will be likely where the Uneven and Chaotic Energy Futures persist in 2030. South America, most of Asia, the European Union, and the United States have a chance at forging a Bright Future.
Of course, knowing the risks and the upside potential for what sustainability can offer will make a difference in planning for a Bright Future. This is your wake-up call.
The Bright Energy Future. In this scenario society, with the private sector as a partner in change, has invested smartly in building out mostly renewable energy resources based on leading-edge innovations. The gradual phase-out from a petro energy scenario to a renewable one was conducted in stages so as to not shock the economy. The production of new jobs and the phase-out of certain industries were undertaken with careful planning and collaboration of industry and government partners.
They invested in changing their schools and universities, employment policies to create clean-tech jobs, educated their citizens to get support, created a private/public investment strategy, and made smart R&D choices decades before creating actions to produce the Green Economy.
They had a plan to make a transition into a renewable future, which they understood required thinking ahead. This Future Smart approach made a difference as they chose energy over other investments early on in order to work as a nation toward building a more sustainable and independent energy future. The leaders made a conscious choice to become a renewable and energy-independent nation.
Other nations around them followed suit, and this led to an entire region of the world that joined together to invest in renewable and clean tech. Capital investments in creating cheap, plentiful, and renewable energy sources that leverage low carbon emissions was at the core of their plan, and it paid off. In this scenario energy is an enabler of prosperity, innovation, and productivity.
They are an energy exporter to their friends. Global and regional collaboration has led to a Global Energy Grid. A new distributed energy generation has led to alternative energies slowly taking over the demand from petro fuel supply sources. Their future is hopeful and promising as they look ahead.
The Uneven Energy Future. In this scenario there is not enough energy to keep pace with population and society needs due to poor planning for the future due to a failure of the private sector and government to work together. There was too much “head in the sand” denial of the future realities that were coming, and by the time change was needed, society was not Future Ready. There is an uneven supply, insufficient to meet demand, which keeps rising, so energy rationing and partial power is available. Poor forecasting in the past about population change, the rising middle class, and expectations of energy needs left this society ill-prepared for the future. Low investments in energy and an overreliance on foreign sources of energy remain a problem.
There was no foresight in planning for the future. This society is an energy importer that has been held captive to the market for energy, and the costly price fluctuations have been a problem. They also have a hostile energy supplier that holds them hostage, hiking up prices in the winter and each year using energy as a political weapon. Foreign nations that hold sovereign debt and have a hold over energy imports wield a large footprint on national law and policy that turns some nations into vassal states, dependent on other energy-rich nations and global cartels. Microwars emerge when the tensions between energy-rich and energy-poor states become stressed.
In this scenario energy is a drag on prosperity, innovation, and productivity. The society is held back from long-term stability and security because of a natural resource drag on the economy. They overpay for energy that is uneven from a reliable but insecure source. This scenario continues to widen the gaps between the affluent and the poor. Energy will be a key driver in building a higher quality of life, peace, and prosperity.
The Chaotic Energy Future. In this scenario a partial or complete breakdown of society and the energy infrastructure due to war, conflict, and strife ensues. Failed states lose their control over the governance of the state due a number of social and political conflicts, leading to a collapse in the access to a secure source of energy. Regardless of whether energy is local or imported, the traditional supply chains break down in a failed state. Energy becomes a valuable commodity used by various factions to promote their power and destabilize society.
Criminal and terrorist factions use energy to fuel conflict. As conflict persists, economic and social chaos contributes to population migration and strife. In this scenario the disintegration of their society sharply reduces this nation’s capacity to fuel their basic needs. Recovering from this energy future will be difficult and will make many in the population Energy Refugees who go in search of a secure source of energy in a society that is not in conflict or crisis.
Energy Independence 1.0
By the middle of the next decade or so North America will be energy independent due to an energy mix of gas and renewable sources. Many argue that gas provides a better option than being dependent on paying foreign oil cartels, and there is logic there. These cartels originate in nations that have both fragile and hostile scenarios in their near future.
These nations in the Middle East and South America represent an undue risk factor for the United States, and I foresee a migration away from OPEC oil for a variety of reasons, cost as well as geopolitics.
Innovation in building a renewable infrastructure will take time to build and scale in order to be productive and generate more than the current 10 percent of total energy in the United States. But this inevitable future, an energy-independent America, will upset the world economic order. Select OPEC member states may survive and turn to sales in Asia, such as China, or move to opening lines to Europe. Some oil-producing nations may go bankrupt or suffer social strife and geopolitical conflict as energy buyers and sellers shift.
An Energy-Hungry Planet
I forecast that within ten years, by 2025, Europe will be over 50 percent fueled by renewables, with some nations such as Germany and some Scandinavian nations even higher, closer to 60 percent. Nuclear in Europe, especially in France and Germany, will continue to offset fossil fuels usage and contribute to Europe’s alternative energy mix. The problem with the EU’s energy access will continue to be its dependence on Russia, which uses energy as a tool of political power. In the near future this situation will change as well.
In Asia, China will be the interesting story to watch unfold. The sheer scale of its size will demand energy resources of many types—renewable, fossil fuels, and nuclear—to meet demand. As China attempts to industrialize and postindustrialize, to do in less than twenty years what the United States and Europe did in about one hundred years, an abundance of energy will be paramount to fueling its growth and prosperity. A mixed energy supply, with an emphasis on coal and nuclear, is likely what will come faster.
Fueling Developing Nations
China’s issues related to energy are social unrest and quality of life. By 2030 they will need to make investments in cheap coal, which they have as well as other petro fuels, due to the sheer scale of population needs, and this is why they cannot wait for renewables to come online.
In India, as with most of Asia, the story will be the same. A huge 1 billion-person middle class is heading for the cities, looking for jobs, getting into universities, running from the farms, looking for prosperity. The sheer scale of this demand will strain energy resources, regardless of the planning efforts now being undertaken. Likely the largest democracy in the world, India will not fare as well as China, given the capacity of an autocracy to deliver political alignment and effective accomplishments. China will get more done faster.
India’s states remain more powerful than the federal government and are vastly diverse in culture, economics, and customs. Until this is changed and a stronger federal government can establish what China has—a national policy for energy and the future—I forecast India will have spotty success in managing their energy.
This works against having a cogent energy policy for the nation that can align resources and literally move mountains for the greater good of society. No matter how innovative the energy plan, with the authority, at the national level, to make it happen with all of the states pulling together, a fragmented attempt at best will not resolve the challenges of India’s energy-dependent future.
China’s central planning is smarter than most nations, and they are grappling with the enormity of change they have seen and the progress that is coming. They are attempting to build a modern society with the energy that a modern society demands to be modern. This is no small task.
China’s Green Future
Little progress can ensue without ample sources of energy to drive China’s future. In this quest they are not alone but China is in competition for energy with many other nations vying for control of energy assets, especially fossil fuels. As China looks ahead, their leaders are smartly hedging their bets that petro fuels, especially oil, coal, and gas, with the mix of nuclear, will be required for thirty to fifty years before renewables can make a significant contribution to their energy future. I would not disagree, but innovations explored here, such as fusion, could be massive game changers for China and the world.
I do forecast that energy innovations, from fusion to solar and fuel cells combined with other renewables, will make a difference in building tomorrow’s megacities in Asia. We could be surprised by what innovations bring in the near future. With so many innovations just now being invented, from mobile to social media, to artificial cells to synthetic biology, I forecast that innovations in energy are coming faster than the public is aware of.
I forecast that China will move aggressively to create new Green Cities out of the new Megacities of their future. These will be energy-independent microgrids, resulting in smart cities of the future. China has the vision and the power to create cities, and they must, given the explosive growth in their population.
Their experiment in designing cities is in the beginning stages, but this trial-and-error will lead to bold Green Cities of the future, where fossil fuels are less impactful on their energy mix and renewables are embraced.
Though many cities in China today, from the smog in Beijing and Hong Kong, are not yet optimally healthy examples due to the overabundance of fossil fuels, I forecast that the Green Cities of the future will emerge faster in China than they will other nations in Asia, as their leadership vision will lead this innovation to shape China’s future.
In China’s last five-year plan from 2013 they published for the entire world to see, they identified clean technology and the environment as key objectives for their nation. We have to wonder why it is that so few nations have an energy plan or even the insight to publish one every five years. In this plan China indicated that the energy needs of their nation must contribute to the prosperity not only of the nation but also the planet.
As China is on a nation-building roller coaster, moving quickly and furiously, trying to keep ahead of its 1.3 billion people’s needs, adopting an energy mix that demonstrates a clean-tech and renewable strategy is Future Smart. As China’s population becomes more entitled, expectations about energy and quality of life will become more of a priority.
Future Energy Mix
Global energy consumption is expected, on the low end, to at least double, and I forecast it may triple by 2040. This forecast is based on current energy uses against population growth, increased trade, global GDP growth, and globalization up-trends. I forecast the higher number is actually a more accurate forecast given the advanced postindustrialization of our civilization—we are going to need a lot more energy to sustain our civilization in the future. The future of peace and prosperity will be based on energy access.
I forecast that the future global energy mix must have at least 60 percent of its sources as renewables before 2030 in order to prepare for an energy-hungry world of perhaps 9 billion. We must invest smartly in growing this capacity or else the future will not be sustainable. Energy security, the use and access to energy to grow societies, is the central challenge facing our world. Renewables are the insurance and the cure for a world dominated today by fossil fuels.
Asia, especially China and India, is expected to become the dominant energy importer. Already Australia and Africa have become China’s natural resources targets. The next 2 billion people joining the middle class will demand energy on par with the rest of the global middle class.
Their expectations for energy access will be no less demanding than everyone else. In fact, they will demand more energy. We must plan for this future today by increasing our energy investments or else this expectation, if not entitlement, will be a disruptive social force that no government wants to confront. Ample and affordable energy will fuel upward mobility, prosperity, and global security.
Fusion Reactor Winks: 2030
The Argonne Fusion reactor had what we thought was a malfunction today, and energy service transmissions were briefly interrupted. The Wink, as it is called, is a natural phenomenon that fusion systems sometime experience that opens a brief portal in space-time.
Though no one has captured a proper video record of this Wink, as the time it lasts is in one-trillionth of a second and cannot be seen by the human eye, with fancy programs the computers have estimated what the reaction is.
The Wink produced a white, shiny crystalline object, left behind after the phenomenon occurred. It is being studied to determine what it may be. Because the use of fusion reactors is very new regardless of the extent to which they are now being deployed, providing as much as 75 percent of the planet’s energy, the Wink Phenomenon is an unknown and strange experience, the significance of which we do not know.
In North America the energy story will be bright indeed. With an economy self-sufficient by 2025 or before due to the large gas resources, the United States especially should turn to renewables R&D, as this will be a multitrillion-dollar or multitrillion-Euro market in the near future. But do not mistake the energy independence of North America based on gas to be the whole story.
If clean-tech and renewable investments wane, the far future beyond gas will be a problem for North America. We need to plow the capital into R&D to build a renewable energy future beyond gas in order to sustain that future. Natural gas is also not a clean or renewable energy source. It is still a pollutant and contributes to carbon emissions. Just because North America has an abundance of gas that could keep the lights on for the next one hundred–plus years, this doesn’t mean it is the ideal energy source.
Every nation will need to ramp up its renewables investments in energy. Energy will become a political issue more so than today, and governments will rise and fall based on energy policies’ success or failure. Today in the West we take energy for granted, but the marketplace is changing. More energy demand and less secure supply—it will be a different future, one much more reliant on energy to feed, cloth, shelter, and fuel the economies.
At current consumption rates for energy, which are expected to rise significantly, the cost of energy will continue to increase. Nonrenewable energy sources, fossil fuels, will become more expensive as we move toward 2030. This will be offset by the price performance of renewable energy, which will have an advantage in the marketplace. With lower or competitive pricing compared to fossil fuels, renewables will be adopted faster by 2025 or before.
Rapid economic growth in China and India, combined with increased energy use in industrialized nations, will upset the supply and demand of the energy marketplace and will stress the world’s energy resources by or before 2030.
Competing for Energy
There will not be enough energy to keep pace with global GDP after 2030 without new energy and renewable energy sources coming online. We have known this fact for a decade, but as a civilization, we have not invested smartly to accelerate innovations in energy production. That must change. In this regard we are shaping the future we don’t want—a future of restricted and expensive nonrenewable energy that will become a drag on prosperity, security, and quality of life.
Every nation or organization must factor in energy competition for resources as an essential factor influencing their future. The organization that is, perhaps ironically, the most Future Smart about energy is the US Department of Defense. The leadership, in order to be agile, global, and Future Ready, has made a swift change toward adopting and developing new renewable energy technologies that can “live off the land” and be adaptive to any terrain.
The Department of Defense is the biggest single energy user in the United States, and by 2025 it must source 25 percent of its power from renewable energy. I forecast that projects will require tens of billions of dollars and Euros in private investment and finance, making the military the Green Leader in the world. Fast deployment of energy production such as biofuel-ready transport, which can use waste such as brush or methane, has been used effectively.
Alternative fuels and equipment from computers to phones to transportation has led to a major shift toward the use of renewables. As with most innovations in the commercial sector that started with government development, such as GPS and countless other innovations, accelerating the renewable energy future makes sense. It might also win wars. As it is said, armies win wars on their stomachs, but in the future they will also need sustainable energy to win—so will everyone else.
This future can and must be averted with investments in renewable innovations and new traditional energy sources that must fill the gap until renewables can take up the slack. It would not be any more rational to assume that we can just turn off the fossil fuel spigot than it would be to think we can instantly accelerate renewable energy innovations without spending trillions and two to three decades of development.
The price of meeting the world’s energy demands is estimated at $26.3 trillion through 2030—an average of more than $1 trillion a year, based on data from the International Energy Agency. That seems like a lot of capital, but not if you consider that this is the price tag for building an entirely new energy system to meet the world’s growing needs.
China, India, and the other powerhouse economies in Asia will account for more than 65 percent of the projected total world energy demand on the planet by 2030. The offset of this forecast is the amount of energy produced locally by renewable sources, which could reduce this by as much as half. My forecast is that Asian economies will become Future Smart faster than most nations by learning from the mistakes that an overabundance on fossil fuels, especially coal in India and China, and this will motivate them to invest heavily in clean tech.
The report also notes that sometime after 2010 renewable energy will likely surpass natural gas to become the second-largest source of electricity behind coal. Estimates run as high as $5 trillion is needed between 2010 and 2030 in additional energy-efficiency investments to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at 550 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent.
To reduce concentrations to a lower 450 ppm, $4 trillion more would be needed to pay for low- or zero-carbon power plants, and $3 trillion for more energy-efficient equipment. And we need to double this to make a real difference in the world’s future. Is that possible? There is not the will yet to embrace this future.
Smart Machines Can Help
What these forecasts miss is a fundamental idea that will drive the future: innovations in technology and science, given the exponential doubling of technology’s power, will be shaped by powerful supercomputers, Smart Machines of the future, cognitive engines of innovation, that will be vastly faster and cheaper, with capabilities beyond what we can imagine today. This will shape the future of energy. What we pay for in computing power today, which may cost $1, will cost 1,000 percent of 1 cent within ten years if we invest in inventing the next generation of clean energy that uses solar, wind, thorium, methane, or, more radically, the use of nanotechnology to extract energy from atoms directly. By 2040 this power and the innovations it brings may be almost free as future technologies emerge that will radically shift the economics of the planet beyond oil and gas.
Many of the leading energy policy organizations are shortsighted in their forecasts—certainly not Future Smart in making the fundamental connection between renewable energy investments and increased renewable energy adoption. This myopia misleads everyone, causing them to make poor decisions that do not put enough focus on renewable energy investments and, thus, slowing down the renewable energy deployment rates.
The $30 Trillion Price Tag
The truth is that without investing a trillion dollars a year in renewable energy for the next thirty years, we will not see the innovations that could change the course of our civilization’s future. And we need to start now with the investments that will make a difference in the future. Renewable energy could supply up to 70 percent of global electricity and heat demands by 2030 if investments increased significantly to support that. We need to create a global energy revolution by improving energy efficiency and increasing the deployment of low-carbon-producing clean energy.
Since before the Industrial Revolution societies have relied on increasing supplies of energy to meet their need for goods and services Major changes in current trends are required if future energy systems are to be affordable, safe, secure, and environmentally sound. There is an urgent need for a sustained and comprehensive strategy to help resolve the following challenges:
Top Challenges to Face Now
• Providing affordable energy services for the well-being of the 7 billion people today and the 10 billion people projected in 2050
• Improving living conditions and enhancing economic opportunities, particularly for another 3 billion people
• Increasing energy security for all nations, regions, and communities
• Reducing global energy system greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels
• Reducing indoor and outdoor air pollution from fuel combustion and its impacts on human health
• Figuring out how to use the tools we have—nano, IT, bio, neuro—useful to help create a new global renewable energy future
Major transformations in energy systems are required to meet these challenges and to increase prosperity. For example, by 2050 almost three-quarters of the world’s population are forecasted to be living in cities. The provision of services and livelihood opportunities to growing urban populations in the years to come presents a major opportunity for transforming energy systems and avoiding lock-in to energy supply-and-demand patterns that are counterproductive to sustainability goals.
From Carbon Trading to Moon Mining: The Top Future Energy Innovations
Energy is mission essential for developing the future—every aspect of the future, including economic growth, health care, and peace. Prosperity is the end product of energy access. You need energy to make progress happen. New energy sources, from the bottom of the ocean to space or from the moon to renewables, will shape the future of power in the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. Innovations will shape this future. Here are the leading innovations that will shape the future.
Carbon Trading Exchanges
Carbon trading exchanges operate today like a stock or bond market that enables companies to easily buy and sell voluntary carbon credits. Some of these carbon credits are known as Verified Emission Reductions (VERs). Carbon trading can address climate change by using market forces to generate funds for investing in innovation to manage carbon emissions or to create new alternative energy technologies. This approach can help schools, create jobs, fund health care programs, and protect biodiversity.
Though the concept has been proved up, the integration of a global carbon exchange, adopted by every nation and enterprise, has not occurred as yet. This is the future development that must occur to make carbon trading a viable way to fund innovation to manage climate change and to motivate companies to adopt clean and renewable energy and phase out fossil fuels that are harming the environment and the economy.
The value of the global carbon trading market in 2014 is over €46 billion, according to Bloomberg Finance. Carbon trading can be an effective strategy to finance projects that would not otherwise be financed or even developed. The use of carbon credits could be used as part of a company’s carbon management strategy to manage its emissions challenges effectively. Trading in carbon credits can support a company’s efforts to reduce emissions and help boost global competiveness and customer engagement.
One leading example is the Carbon Trade Exchange (CTX, http://carbon tradexchange.com). Using CTX’s trading platform, any business can access hundreds of carbon projects worldwide as well as their associated carbon credits to create a carbon-offset project and to make a difference in the world. CTX operates spot exchanges in multiple global environmental commodity markets, including carbon, renewable energy certificates (RECs), and water.
By 2020, in all the major carbon-emitting developed and emerging countries, many businesses are likely to be carbon challenged. The cost of doing business will go up if companies do not volunteer to reduce carbon emissions in a big way. The emergence of a global carbon market should be active and become part of every organization’s plans. Businesses across the world must prepare for a future when they are carbon challenged. Companies that prepare now—becoming Future Smart—and anticipate this future will be ahead of the competition. Companies that adopt low-carbon and adaptation strategies will gain a competitive advantage and reap the benefits later when the countries in which they operate implement carbon policies.
Developing countries are already very actively implementing national climate strategies ahead of even some developed countries. There is not a global market for the buying and selling of carbon credits at the level that it needs to be in order to make a difference in generating the trillions in dollars needed to offset carbon emissions. Developing nations understand that they will be hardest hit by climate change, so they are adopting climate change policies, such as carbon trading, now or in the short-term future. The largest carbon emitters, China and the United States, must step up to this challenge.
Renewable Energy Entrepreneurs
Imagine what would happen if there were incentives for every business, home owner, or renter on the planet to generate their own clean energy, not just for their personal use but also to donate, sell, and profit from. How fast do you think companies would make inexpensive solar, wind, and biomass equipment if every power utility or government had to buy excess energy produced by businesses and consumers? This would generate a new era of Renewable Energy Entrepreneurs ready to give back and make back their investment. This distributed crowdsourced energy would quickly offset traditional power generation and move us closer to the clean energy future that is both nonpolluting, cost effective, and politically in line with making all of our communities energy independent.
Wireless Energy Transfer: The Next Big Thing
There is technology that could power your phone as well as the planet. Wireless energy has been around for a long time, but no one has yet commercialized it. Tesla invented this. Intel is leading it with a Croatian MIT physicist and electrical engineer who started a company to bring it to market (http://www .witricity.com). This is wireless energy transfer.
It works by capturing power from the existing wired infrastructure with a phone or any device—without wires. The full potential is to capture and transfer energy from one location, where it is made or stored, to where it is needed, via wireless connection. So downloading energy from the cloud, from anywhere on the planet, is possible someday.
Tesla demonstrated wireless energy transfer almost 120 years ago at the 1893 World Fair in Chicago when he powered light bulbs. Sometimes it takes a long period of less-than-innovative solutions to figure out how to get to the really important ones.
You will find wireless energy showing up at Starbucks, the office, and the gym. We are on the edge of a wireless energy breakthrough. Wireless energy transfer could power the Smart Grid and light up a city or even the entire planet if networked properly.
Energy Beacons
Energy Beacons, a network of millions of nano- and micro-energy production and storage devices (built by 3D printers), developed by the M2M and IoT sensors, will be installed, dropped out of planes, and distributed throughout the planet, from oceans to buildings to rooftops.
This particular type of microgrid network will capture, store, produce, and transmit energy locally. Energy Beacons could be designed to beam renewable energy collected from buildings, oceans, mountains, and deserts to way stations both on the Earth and in near-Earth orbit.
Sensing, capturing, and converting to power from the movements of oceans and rivers, the solar emissions from the sun, the energy produced by biomass and hydro, and the movements of millions of cars, trains, and other transportation will be captured for use. Currently it is wasted—there is an entire global energy infrastructure that is unseen, uncollected, and unknown.
All around us human activity produces energy that is not captured but wasted. What if your energy usage could produce energy with a twofold capture of personal energy use? With energy beacons—small computers with sensors designed to self-organize, turn on, and capture ambient energy that is produced in the world through movement and actions by natural and man-made structures—we could be capturing energy that could fuel our lives.
Imagine the possibility of becoming energy independent, to get off the grid by developing your own energy grid. Now, what would that look like? Just as you might have a garden and plant it, you would install energy devices that were in various sizes, some designed to collect renewable energy and others that would store it, and maybe others that would transmit it to a larger local energy network that could even pay you for the energy you provided.
Or you could sell your energy to others—energy P2P. Your own energy grid to collect and sell and trade energy would transform the economics of energy. There might even be aggregators of energy that you sell to or buy from that bring together producers and customers in a Renewable Energy Market. And this entire scenario could be realized with technology, economics, and ingenuity that exist today. Not everything that could happen in the future will be invented in the future. Some of it is possible today—just not realized as yet.
Now imagine further that your new car is not just electric but can generate energy for your home use. Your solar arrays on top of your house or that you installed on your property or even sold to others are generating energy that you can capture, store, use, and even sell what you’re not using. Imagine that you and everyone in your village, town, or city are doing the same.
What do you call this? A New Energy Grid. This is a Future Smart network that uses microgrids to capture, store, and distribute energy that fossil fuels would not affect. At first there might not be enough energy production to fuel the needs of an entire city without additional large-scale energy resources, even fossil fuels, but that will change.
Fuel Cells
Fuel cells are devices that convert fuel into electricity through a clean electro-chemical process rather than dirty combustion. They are like batteries except that they always run. Fuel cells were invented over a century ago and have been used in practically every NASA mission since the 1960s, but until now they have not been adopted widely because of their inherently high costs.
A new type of commercially available fuel cell is called a Bloom cell. These are a type of distributed power generator producing clean, reliable, affordable electricity at the customer site. Bloom cells are a particular type of fuel cell technology, different from legacy “hydrogen” fuel cells in three main ways:
• Low-cost materials: these cells use a common sand-like powder instead of precious metals like platinum or corrosive materials like acids.
• High electrical efficiency: they can convert fuel into electricity at nearly twice the rate of some legacy technologies.
• Fuel flexibility: these systems are capable of using either renewable or fossil fuels.
Each Bloom Energy Server provides 200kW of power, enough to meet the base load needs of 160 average homes or an office building, day and night, in roughly the footprint of a standard parking space. For more power, simply add more energy servers—scalable power on demand. Many Silicon Valley companies are using them today.
Numerous new fuel cells to power your car, house, city, and maybe even you will emerge from fuel cell technology over the next decade. In time cells will be smaller and more powerful, following the trajectory of the supercomputer—exponential technology power doubling each year. Smaller, faster, and more powerful fuel cells are coming quickly.
Methane Mining
Below the surface of the ocean, in one of the deepest areas, lies a discovery, just off the Gulf of Mexico, that might solve the energy dilemma of our century. This discovery of methane hydrates at one thousand meters beneath the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico may hold the answer to the future of energy, as this fuel source would provide a new energy asset that, for hundreds of years, would fuel the planet. Chevron and the US Department of Energy discovered the reserve of hydrates in high concentrations in fifteen-to thirty-meter-thick beds of sand.
It looks appealing that methane hydrates are available, but that is not the whole story. And the United States is not the only nation looking with keen interest at methane mining.
I would forecast that, given that, due to climate change, as the Arctic Circle is opening up, access to methane in the deepest ranges in the ocean would become possible. The question is whether we will be Future Smart enough to develop methane mining as an energy source, as it will upset the energy monopolies and industries that exist on the planet. A new energy race will ensue after 2020 when methane mining, along with the rush to mine the oil and gas reserves in the Arctic, becomes a gold rush—everybody wants a piece of the action.
Methane hydrate mining by Japan has been very productive in pointing to the future potential of this energy source. Japan, which has endured the Fukushima nuclear crisis and has no traditional fossil fuels of its own, is investing heavily in methane mining. Japan does not want to be an energy importer. Instead, Japan wants to commercialize its methane hydrates, which would give China, India, and Korea the assist they need to do the same. Methane hydrates are trapped within a crystal structure of water that forms a solid similar to that of ice. Large deposits of it are found on ocean floors. The challenge is that methane is highly unstable, actually explosive, and extracting it, as well as finding it, can be very dangerous.
Moon Mining He-3
Didn’t you always want to go to the moon? Well, now is your chance. Start packing, though you have a few years until you leave. There will be a job for you there soon. Read on.
There may be an opportunity for lunar resources to play a role in the energy industry here on Earth. Power generation is a vast and growing market. Energy is a product that may be cost effective and profitable to beam back to the Earth’s surface from the moon. But we need to set up operations on the moon to make this happen.
To meet the energy needs of the next few centuries we need to plan for the advantages that could be provided by establishing a lunar energy base. One is mining of the moon for helium, or He-3. Though costly—in the billions—the return on investment could be huge and the capture of this energy resource and could provide nonpolluting and clean energy for many generations into our far future.
Technology to mine the moon to produce He-3 calls for large mobile miners, reactors, and storage yet to be designed but should be in progress over the next few years. It may be possible to extract He-3 from the moon and convert it to energy or bring it back in some form. We would need new reactors and technology to both mine the helium as well as a way to cost-effectively move the energy to Earth. There is strong speculation that moon mining will be achievable in the near future, and that it is a viable and economic source of energy.
Emerging Solar Cells
The core of solar energy production are cells that do the hard work—this is the production of solar energy. This technology is fast evolving and will be shaped by the revolution in high-performance solar cells that are a million times more efficient than what we have today. Think mainframe computers versus wearable personal computers—cheap, fast, and immensely powerful. The future solar cells will likely be based on organic photovoltaic (OPV) solar cells. Unlike traditional silicon solar cells, which are currently used in rooftop solar panels and large-scale solar farms, OPVs use organic semiconductors.
These are made today from plastics and other flexible materials and are much lighter, more flexible, and less expensive. In the future we will “grow” organic solar cells from natural substances such as plants or organic waste products. OPV cells use environmentally friendly green materials and can be produced quickly, with lower processing and materials costs. In the future the production of OPV solar cells will be conducted locally by your roof or windows, which shall self-assemble OPVs by the trillions. Connected networks of OPV solar networks will next become merged into the IoT and become part of the smart energy grids that fuel the planet.
Mega-Solar Space Arrays
The world needs to find new sources of clean energy quickly, and the best direction to look to find a solution may be up. Space solar power gathers energy from sunlight in space and transmits it wirelessly to Earth with microwaves. Space solar power could possibly provide clean and renewable energy for the long-term needs of the planet. After all, there is plenty of sunlight for at least 5 billion years until the sun goes supernova. After that, well, even this futurist can honestly say, I don’t know.
Challenges around the huge costs in the millions can be overcome as energy becomes more expensive, and putting solar arrays in space won’t seem too crazy. We know that solar power can provide large quantities of cheap energy to every nation on the planet. Imagine a network of space arrays in orbit over the earth that capture and beam energy 24/7, 365 days a year. The energy produced would be consistent, cheap, and reliable. Also, as this would be a huge renewable energy resource, it would not be polluting or contribute to carbon emissions.
The solar energy available in space is literally billions of times greater than we use today. The lifetime of the sun is an estimated 4 to 5 billion years, making space solar power a truly long-term energy solution. As Earth receives only one part in 2.3 billion of the sun’s output, space solar power is by far the largest potential energy source available, dwarfing all others combined. Solar energy is routinely used on nearly all spacecraft today.
Space and the Future of Energy
The future of energy is in space. The United States and many other nations understand this. The US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is conducting research and building technology that would enable the United States to capture solar power in orbit and project it back down to Earth. Not only would space solar potentially save funds, but it would also create a global agility to distribute energy that few nations have today.
Disaster relief or war could be addressed with agility, based on fuel-on-demand, no matter where the location is on the planet. This advantage could play an important role in enabling operations around the world for peace, commerce, global development, disaster relief, and security.
You have to appreciate about Mega Solar Arrays that, in order to really do their job and capture the huge amounts of solar energy in order to demonstrate a reliable source of energy, they need to be enormous. These solar arrays would be large, from one to five kilometers in size. That’s the largest solar satellites ever conceptualized. And if you consider that there will be over one hundred or more orbiting around the planet at the same time, it could get crowded up there in space. The sheer size of this armada of Mega Solar Arrays could satisfy the energy needs of the next one hundred megacities. Mega Solar for megacities. This is the future coming at us fast.
The California utility company Pacific Gas and Electric has a space solar power project with Solaren. The Shimizu Corporation of Japan is developing a plan to build across the lunar equator to capture and transfer the sun’s energy. The Japanese are preparing to develop a ¥2 trillion space solar project that will, within three decades, beam electricity from space in the form of microwaves or lasers to homes in Japan. Likely this cost will go up, but so will the capabilities of the technology increase.
There are a variety of projects that share the purpose of building the Mega Solar Space Arrays that will be launched after 2020 to beam energy back to Earth. A Japanese consortium has been formed from sixteen companies, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. Though the details and timelines are different, their objective is the same—develop the technology needed to beam electricity to Earth.
I have reviewed ten different designs for solar space arrays, and the activity and millions being invested leads me to forecast that space arrays will be operational after 2025. The energy production of capturing and beaming back to Earth is both plausible and achievable in our lifetimes.
Great demands on Earth for energy will drive investments in space. There are few businesses more compelling than the ROI on energy. As every nation and entrepreneur realizes, the ferocious energy demand that 10 billion people will have, the more opportunity and risk will follow us into the near future.
Harnessing the Stars
Imagine the power of a fusion reaction. One gallon of seawater would provide the equivalent energy of three hundred gallons of gasoline; fuel from fifty cups of water contains the energy equivalent of two tons of coal. That’s a lot of energy, enough to support 10 billion by 2050 on the planet, no doubt. And the energy of fusion is the energy of the stars.
Fusion energy is likely still ten to twenty years off, but it is coming fast. Just like other breakthroughs that came much faster, such as sequencing the human genome, we could all again be surprised when fusion comes sooner. So get ready for accelerated innovations in energy, as fusion is on the top of my list for It’s Going to Happen Faster.
Big Fusion
The largest nuclear fusion project on the planet is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). It will bring together two decades of research from nations representing 80 percent of the world’s GDP, European mostly. With a price of over €20 billion, ITER will be the largest and most expensive project to explore whether fusion could fuel Europe’s future. There are billions of Euros betting that the future of energy is fusion. There is no other energy project with a higher price tag or with higher expectations than ITER. This project will determine the future of fusion, given the scale and investment in science.
The strategic objective for investing in fusion is to reduce European dependence on foreign energy, as is the US efforts. Europe is establishing the lead on seeking to prove up that developing energy that utilizes readily available natural resources, such as water used to fuel fusion, is practical and cost effective.
The endgame is to reverse the status of the European Union as an energy importer. As with many nations, this is not economically or politically sustainable, not a preferred future to be dependent on others for your energy needs in a quickly changing world.
MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center has been on the leading edge of creating the future of energy. Here scientists have conducted experiments using a reactor called Alcator C-Mod to imitate and control the energy source of the stars. This is a big deal. It’s tough, expensive, and tiresome research, but it is exciting because they know they just might change the world. The MIT scientists are on track to crack the largest mystery of the universe: How can we puny humans replicate what stars do? Can we make energy like the sun, like our star does?
The scientists and engineers know what’s at stake. It’s like they are in a B movie set to save the world from the ravages of an energy-starved world on the brink of disaster. The Alcator C-Mod reactor, made from special tungsten alloy steel, weighs over one hundred tons. It’s the size of a one-car garage, which is similar in size to the old mainframe computers. One wonders how long before Moore’s Law turns this mainframe computer complex into a handheld smartphone—and it will happen.
California researchers have had good progress in developing a source of unlimited energy. It is almost science fiction, the stuff of Star Trek, but it’s getting closer to being real. These researchers are working to harness the power of nuclear fusion, the same process that powers stars like our sun. Scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) made significant progress in proving up that fusion can generate energy in a repeatable experiment. This is an essential step toward developing an energy source that would be cheap, plentiful, and environmentally friendly—you have to create a stable, reliable, and repeatable process. We are on our way.
Fusion is a completely different energy source from fission, which is more familiar to most of us. We know how to make energy from fission: we split the atom and, thus, create the energy. In nuclear fusion atoms are fused together to create unimaginably massive amounts of energy. The creation of a star—no small task—is what fusion is all about. The good news is that in the near future fusion will power our cities, cars, and spaceships.
Fusion is the game-changing energy technology that will transform our civilization, enabling us to leave the planet but not before we fix many things, such as the Grand Challenges we have been reviewing here. Clean and renewable energy, from the sun, as fusion mimics, will completely transform our world in positive ways.
Fusion energy, when finally delivered—and we are close—will provide the energy for the planet that will propel prosperity and progress. When energy is abundant, inexpensive, and renewable, it will no longer be a drag on economic development and growth.
With no nuclear radiation fallout, no instability leading to a meltdown, no chance of it being used as a weapon, fusion is the safest and most powerful form of future energy on the planet. Though not here yet, the potential is amazing, and we are getting close. I forecast that by 2030 or before fusion will be practical and proven.
One gram of deuterium and tritium—the fuel used in fusion—produces nearly 10 million times the amount of energy a gram of fossil fuels produces. Deuterium is found in water, and there is enough on the planet for fueling the entire planet for millions of years. Imagine an energy this productive and cheap.
The fundamental reason why there is so much interest in fusion research is that once we figure out how to generate and control fusion, we will have the energy of the stars at our fingertips for a fraction of the price of energy today. Humanity will benefit greatly from this Future Smart energy source, and generations to come, both here on Earth and those who will leave for the stars, will have the fusion experimenters to thank.
Nano-Energy
Nanotechnology is the fascinating science of manipulating matter at the atomic level. This is imitative of a process that nature uses to make things every minute of every day. Photosynthesis, the capture of light and the manufacture of oxygen, uses a similar process in nature. In nanotechnology we are learning how to imitate nature’s own processes to design matter at the atomic scale.
To be clear: nanotechnology is a not all possible or a mature industry today but does represent a fundamental new Super Tool that in the near and far future will transform our civilization as we learn to make simple and complex materials, machines, and products that will enable commerce, prosperity, and quality of life in entirely new ways. We will be able to nano-manufacture almost everything with nano-engineering and nanoscience. Nothing will be more transformative than the use of nanotechnology for generating energy.
We will look at this emerging and future technology in a number of chapters in this book, as the Nano Revolution has just begun and holds amazing potential to change the future. We will look at nano-energy innovations here. The implications of this technology are only beginning to be understood. The potential is enormous, and the implications for energy production, storage, and just about every area related to energy may be game changing. Imagine being able to simply generate energy from water, waste, sun, or directly from atoms and produce large amounts of energy that is cheap to make, offering the world a Nano-Energy Maker that every person could use. Imagine the impact on the world and the transformative power of a cheap and plentiful energy source.
The next revolution in microchips is nano-chips. Vastly smaller and more powerful, nano-chips in sensors, devices, and Smart Machines will increase the performance of all parts of the smart grids that are coming. The combination of strength, conductivity, and small size—at the nano scale—will create a revolution in thin films for solar and every other renewable energy that we can only imagine. Nanotech innovations will play a key role in creating lighter, smarter, more energy-efficient vehicles, aircraft, and ships not yet possible today.
Nanotech could change how we think about transportation by making smarter materials that can “think” for themselves. The ability to manipulate matter could open up new transportation innovations not possible today, such as:
• Self-organizing power that generates from the environment
• Tires that generate and store energy from kinetic movement
• Windows that capture solar energy and then distribute as needed
• Engines that self-assemble materials to optimize energy performance and cost effectiveness
• Smart materials that are painted on surfaces to make the surfaces smart sensors and even embed tiny devices with intelligence that can make networks intelligent
• The ability of every “thing,” from objects, materials, and devices to humans to be able to be tagged by nano-chips and networked to the IoT
Nano-materials used for roofs, solar panels, cars, computers, and houses will have the ability to “make” energy, to generate and store an endless supply of energy. Nano-sensors and-devices will monitor the performance of bridges, tunnels, rails, parking structures, and pavements over time.
Nano-sensors and -devices may also support an enhanced transportation infrastructure that can communicate with vehicle-based systems to help robots and human drivers maintain lane position, avoid collisions, download energy, find information, and adjust travel routes to navigate accidents, to name a few benefits.
Nano-fabrication is the process of designing and creating devices on the nano-scale to improve the performance of devices. Creating devices smaller than one hundred nanometers creates new opportunities to capture, store, and transfer energy.
The inherent level of control that nano-fabrication could give scientists and engineers would be critical in providing the capability of solving many of the problems the world faces today related to the current generation of energy technologies.
I know that nanotechnology sounds crazy—the manipulation of matter—and that all of this science seems complex, but it isn’t: we are now and will continue to make stuff. Nano is about applying the rules that nature uses to make stuff. We are learning from nature how to apply what living things in nature already know how to do.
Harnessing Energy from Storms
Tornados and hurricanes have an intense destructive reputation that, if you have ever been in one, feels as if nature has become unglued and the very fabric of the universe is exploding with a fury that is indescribable. But what if we could harness energy from tornadoes and hurricanes? This might be possible in a world desperate for energy.
The big idea has potential if we can figure out the technology to capture or use this immense power surge. Tornadoes and hurricanes produce massive amounts of energy that can be harnessed. Experts estimate that the average amount of energy a hurricane produces at any given moment measures in at five hundred times the world’s electrical generating capacity at the same moment.
The idea would be to mount a satellite technology that could automatically sense the storm and turn on a huge device that could tap the energy from the storm. Once activated, the satellite would conduct electricity from the storm and draw it into space or convert to microwave energy, beaming it to store on earth. With the increase of storms coming our way as a result of climate change, this could be a viable way to capture energy and reuse it.
Thorium: The Energy of the Gods
What makes this element so interesting is that only one gram of thorium is more energy dense than 7,396 gallons of gasoline. This means that eight grams of the substance could power a thorium turbine motor vehicle for a century. A football-sized amount of thorium could power a city for over one hundred years. This is just what we know about an element that could transform the energy sector, ending centuries of climate change challenges and navigating us toward a fuel for the next millennia.
Thorium, named appropriately for Thor, the Norse God of thunder, is a naturally occurring radioactive chemical element with the symbol Th and atomic number 90. It was discovered in 1828 by the Norwegian mineralogist Morten Thrane Esmark and identified by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius.
Thorium has been compared to uranium in that there is a similar reaction to create the energy as that used in fission, but it is safe and cannot be used for making weapons. Thorium is amply available and in nations such as the United States and India. The amount of thorium available could lead to almost endless supplies. There are many nations that have supplies of thorium. It is a Future Smart energy source that could play an important role in our global future.
Wind and Solar Power
Though wind and solar energy has been around the longest and represent the largest and oldest renewable energy sources, you may be wondering why there are not more investments in these two renewables so they could make up a larger share of the global energy mix.
The answer is that investments into wind and solar have been proportionally low because the consumer demand was low, government incentives spotty, and traditional petro-energy sources were more reliable and plentiful to deploy. That same logic will work in reverse to drive more wind and solar investments in the future.
Wind and solar energy sources are the most plentiful energy and the most developed. In most nations these two renewables could be a significant source of future energy. We should see investments increase by 1,000 percent to realize our sustainable energy goals, as technology gets more powerful and it becomes cheaper to build capacity.
Wind and solar are not resources that will ever deplete. Wind and solar energy do not contribute to global warming. Wind and solar energy are also the least expensive of all renewable energies, and the cost will continue to go down as new technologies are developed that increase yields.
According to the American Wind Energy Association, wind energy in the United States could provide as much as 10,777 billion kilowatt hours annually. This is more than twice the electricity generated in the United States today. In most nations this forecast is equally relevant. Investments in wind alone, but also with large-scale solar could replace the electricity made by the traditional petro-energy sources of today.
As with all of these innovations, the percentage of the energy capacity mix depends on the investments in building out a renewable energy network that can meet the market demand. More investments will yield more capacity and, thus, more energy from wind and solar.
Electric Cars
I forecast that there will be megacities where only electric cars and trucks will be allowed to enter. Cars are the largest polluters on the planet, and if you wanted to curtail pollution, improve air quality, and contribute to reducing carbon emissions, permitting only electric cars to roam our streets would be the way to go. I don’t expect that to happen soon, but there will be cities where this is possible, where by law gas vehicles are not allowed.
This is not likely to happen until there is an air quality crisis coupled with a climate change warming that makes it unhealthy to even walk out into the city. Cities in China and South America have faced similar conditions that contribute to ill health.
The first electric car was developed over one hundred years ago. In 1828 Anyos Jedlik, a Hungarian, gave the world its first electric car. Innovators who saw the future but were blinded by the internal combustion engine developed electric cars. But gas, not electricity, became the new god. As the world becomes more aware about the role gas plays in climate change, people will be looking for ways to reduce our impacts on the environment. Electric cars are a critical part of the solution to climate change.
Within the next one hundred years there likely won’t be an internal combustion engine vehicle that resembles our vehicles today remaining on our streets and highways. Cars that resemble Toyotas, Teslas, BMWs, and Fords will dominate the highways with the hum of all-electric vehicles.
If no major energy and climate policies are introduced to restrict gas usage, the number of vehicles and consumption of petro-fuels will continue to rise. This may triple by 2050, keeping pace with population growth, and this would be unfortunate. In order to reduce the devastating effects of transportation’s CO2 emissions, I forecast that electric cars will be integrated into other renewable transportation systems, such as subways and trains. The electric mandate, by law if need be, especially for urban areas, will ensure more sustainable communities.
Cities are quickly moving toward adopting green infrastructure and clean technology. Many cities have a plan for phasing in electric and phasing out gas cars. Amsterdam plans to increase the number of electric cars on its roads from 750 to 10,000 by 2020 and is working to generate all of their electricity in the city with renewable energy, such as windmills and solar panels, by 2040.
Electric vehicles will be a fundamental part of larger, sustainable transport solutions that all run on electricity made from renewable sources. As electric cars become more commonplace, prices will fall and consumers will purchase more of them. Cities and communities are already realizing the benefits of electrics, and we will see entire communities embrace the sustainable transportation policies that renewables can bring for a new future.
We cannot prosper or even survive in the future given the massive changes that are coming without addressing the challenges to our world regarding energy. We need to develop a long-term future plan. We cannot progress in commerce, end poverty, or provide for the future of our grandchildren’s world if we do not invest massively in the R&D to create a new type of clean energy. The upside potential to build a sustainable future, to become Future Smart, will only come when our innovation investments have paid off, but we need to invest now to create that Clean Energy Future or else it will destroy our future.