Understanding the Bigger Energy Picture: DESERTEC and Beyond

Front matter

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN ENERGY

Understanding ~ the Bigger Energy Picture

g DESERTEC ano Beyond

Preface

This book gives an overview of today’s energy problem in the context of a rising world population, climate change and the shortage of resources. It figures out systemic connections between energy, water and the carbon cycle of today’s economy and sketches a “natural” future energy scenario that is sustainable. Due to the complexity of the matter, this short book cannot be a complete compendium. The proposed solutions and no-goes are meant as a stimulus for further discussion.

Giessen, Germany Michael Diiren

Vii

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my doctoral adviser Prof. Dr. Klaus Schultze who introduced me to the Working Group Energy in the German Physics Society. He died while he was moderating a discussion about future energy concepts in 1999. The biannual meetings of this working group formed the scientific basis of my knowledge of energy technology. The lecture series Verantwortung fiir den Frieden (Responsibility for Peace)' (1983-1987) that I organized as a young student in a working group together with Ranga Yogeshwar opened my eyes to the complexity of social, economic, psychological and political issues, on the one hand, and the impact of science and technology on the other hand. My activity in the SEPA (Solar Energy Partnership with Africa) group based at ZEU (Center for international Development and Environmental Research) at University of Giessen gave me new insights into the energy and water problems in Africa. Last but not least, my activities in the DESERTEC foundation and the DESERTEC University Network allowed me to think about global solutions to the energy problem and my contacts with Dii (DESERTEC industrial initiative) helped me to understand the economic point of view.

It is impossible for me to mention all the people and sources that were the basis of this work. This interdisciplinary book project was for me like solving a jigsaw puzzle. A nearly infinite number of pieces of information from various conferences and discussions had to be translated into a physicist’s language, put together to a common picture, and after a few missing pieces have been reconstructed, the whole picture had to be translated back into an understandable language. An indispensable tool of today’s research is Google and Wikipedia, which are rapidly growing to the most complete database and compendium of human knowledge. One should be aware that the information in Wikipedia is not necessarily correct and sometimes

IM. Düren, R. Yogeshwar (Ed.), Vorlesungsreihe Verantwortung für den Frieden. Mit Hochschullehrern an der RWTH Aachen, 1984, ISBN-13: 9783924007072 ISBN-10: 3924007071. ?M. Düren et al., Solar Energy Partnership with Africa: An Interdisciplinary Research Project, Spiegel der Forschung 25 (2008) Nr. 2 p. 4—English version; JLU Giessen; http://geb.uni-giessen. de/geb/volltexte/2009/7192/.

ix x Acknowledgements biased, but this applies to a certain degree also to scientific books and to governmental reports.

Finally, I must mention Dr. Gerhard Knies, with whom I worked on a common European-North African workshop together long before he invented the name DESERTEC. He is an uncompromising thinker with visions that he follows with great enthusiasm.

The main ideas in this book were presented already in conferences in 2014,* 2015* and 2016.° I want to thank my colleagues Prof. Dr. Gerhard Luther, Prof. Dr. Volker Metag, Prof. Dr. Christian-Dietrich Schénwiese and Prof. Dr. Hartwig Spitzer for their help, support and contributions during the preparation of this book.

Giessen, Germany Michael Diiren February 2017

M. Düren, DESERTEC and beyond—‘“Energiewende” world-wide? EST 2015—Energy, Science, Technology, International Conference and Exhibition; Karlsruhe, Germany, May 20-22, 2015.

5M. Düren, DESERTEC and beyond—Options of a global energy transition, ECM6—The 6th International Symposium on Energy Challenges and Mechanics—towards a big picture, Inverness, Scotland, Aug 14-18, 2016.

Contents

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Contents

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Chapter 1 Introduction

Since thousands of years, the human race has been developing cultural skills and technological capabilities that support its struggle for survival and lead to dominance over all other species. Since about a century, the exponential growth of knowledge, technology, industry and population (see Fig. 1.1) has reached a scale where man modifies biosphere to an extent, that living conditions on the whole planet earth start to change significantly. Resources that had been abundant are becoming scarce within decades. We have arrived in the Anthropocene [1] where man has a significant impact on the basic living conditions of the biosphere of the whole planet. A continuation of this growth rate will unavoidably reach its natural limits where resources vanish; the biosphere will change more rapidly than the ability of organisms and ecosystems to accommodate, and contaminations will endanger living. When such a condition is reached, it is likely that our human civilization will collapse and human population will diminish rapidly. Historic examples demonstrated that drought, hunger, wars and epidemics were typical endpoints of drastic environmental changes and overpopulation. While historic examples mostly affected only individual towns, islands, countries or indigenous nations, the limits of growth this time affect the whole planet and there is no “new world” to which our civilization can migrate. Recent research has proven that the era of a new biological mass extinction has already started [2] and it can be assumed that finally also our species will be affected.

The challenge of this century is the deceleration of growth in general, especially the limitation of the world population to a stable number (e.g. 10 billion people), and the conversion of industrial processes to renewable and sustainable cycles, which will have to be able to supply food and a reasonable standard of living to this large number of people. This paper will focus on the subject of “energy” as one of the essentials of our society, but it will also point out the importance of the nexus of climate, energy, food, water and the carbon cycle.

© The Author(s) 2017 1 M. Diiren, Understanding the Bigger Energy Picture, SpringerBriefs in Energy, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57966-5_1

2 1 Introduction

World population, billions Ww

Fig. 1.1 The estimated human population of the last 12,000 years. It has been small and growing moderately for thousands of years. In the last 50 years, population increased by 1 billion every 13 years [3]

How can a stabilization of the population be achieved before millions of people die from starvation, epidemics, environmental catastrophes or wars? Birth control is essential and not the subject of this paper, but it is important to know that since the begin of industrialization, there has been a strong anti-correlation between the economic wealth and the birth rate, termed the demographic-economic paradox [4] : As soon as a country reaches a high level of education, low unemployment and safe living conditions, birth rates stabilize at low levels instead of using the wealth to nourish more children. The self-determination of women is a prerequisite for this process, as there are examples of countries where a high standard of living for men is realized, but to the cost of the repression of women and of high birth rates. For example, Saudi Arabia has a GDP per capita at the level of Europe, but a fertility rate comparable to India or Egypt. Also, religion plays a role here. All major religions have their roots from a time where birth control was counterproductive for the survival of a cultural cohort and not all religions adjusted the interpretation of their basic articles of faith to the current situation where overpopulation is counterproductive for development. In this sense, solving the energy problem is only one out of several aspects, but still it is an important prerequisite for a peaceful future of the global community.

Wiki: Anthropocene; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene . Ceballos et al. (2015) Accelerated modern human-induced species losses: entering the sixth mass extinction. Sci Adv. 1:e1400253 19 June 3. Figure: by El T [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File%3APopulation_curve.svg; The data is from the “lower” estimates at census.gov (archive.org mirror) 4. Wiki: Income and fertility; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility#Paradox oS

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Chapter 2 The Nexus of Energy, Carbon and Water

All living species including the human body consist mainly of carbon and water, or—to be more precise—they consist of hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds that are dominated by the elements carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. So, it is not surprising that the carbon and water cycles are of special importance for mankind. Carbon and water in the form of food and beverage have two very different functions: they supply humans with energy and in addition they are the basic building blocks of the body. Stable, closed loops of water and carbon on our planet guaranteed our survival since the beginning of mankind.

In the modern world, industrial processes, and especially the conventional methods of energy production, require a large amount of carbon and water and destroy the natural cycles. To restore the stable cycles, we need a different energy system.

This chapter will introduce you to the extraordinary magnitude of the world energy problem and explain its link to the anthropogenic climate change, which turns out to be a game changer for the future of our human society. The restoration of the carbon and water cycles will be essential for our survival. New concepts and methods to preserve and provide freshwater and to reverse desertification and climate change are essential to fight drought and hunger of future generations. Seawater desalination and pyrolysis may be key technologies to achieve that.

2.1 The Challenge of the World Energy Supply

Many people discuss solutions to the energy problem, but often they completely underestimate the order of magnitude of the problem and solutions are offered that nicely work at small scale but not at global scale. The average global energy usage

© The Author(s) 2017 5 M. Diiren, Understanding the Bigger Energy Picture, SpringerBriefs in Energy, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57966-5_2 per second is about 18,000 GW, which corresponds to the electrical output of about 18,000 nuclear power plants (see Box 2.1) [1, 2].

The energy consumption per capita is very different for different countries, e.g. it is 9.9 kW/person in the US, 5.5 kW/person in Germany, and 0.9 kW/person in Africa. The world average is 18,000 GW/7.3 billion people = 2.5kW for each human being today. As population increases and in addition also energy consumption per capita increases, energy needs will increase rapidly in future, especially in developing countries where the consumption per capita is very low today. Neglecting this rising energy need per person, and just taking the population rise into account, an increase to 25,000 GW until 2050 is estimated. The claim, that the energy consumption of the western world stays basically constant since decades is partially misleading, as a large fraction of the industrial production of goods for Western countries has been moved to eastern countries, especially to China. To account for the total energy footprint of a society, the energy footprint of imported goods must be assigned to the consumer and not to the producer to get the picture right.

There are three basic types of energy production: nuclear, fossil and renewable. An energy transition must consider not only the additional 7000 GW that must be installed in the next 35 years to cope with the energy increase of the rising world population, but also a large fraction of the existing world infrastructure of 18,000 GW must be replaced in view of the decarbonisation of the power plants. Together, this leads to an enormous rate of more than 1 GW of newly constructed power generation facilities for every day in the next 35 years and beyond. This is an unprecedented challenge not only in volume but also in speed. The fundamental limitations—beyond any monetary aspects—will be shortage in basic materials and—especially for nuclear energy—timits in qualified manpower and safety aspects, especially in developing and unstable countries. This leads to the following general conclusion:

The bulk of future power plants must be technically simple and inherently safe!

2.1 The Challenge of the World Energy Supply

Box 2.1: The World Energy Usage in Numbers [3]

Primary World Energy Usage Total: 18,176 GW

14%

@ RENEWABLES @ NUCLEAR m COAL, GAS, OIL

Final Consumption Total: 12,506 GW E RESIDENTIAL E TRANSPORT E INDUSTRY @ OTHER

LOST

The average primary world energy usage per second in 2014 was approximately 18,000 GW. 1 GW corresponds approximately to the electrical power of 1 nuclear power station. The renewable contribution of 14% is dominated by the burning of biofuel. The large majority (81%) of the world energy consumption is powered by fossil fuels.

The about 440 existing nuclear power stations count with about 5% to the primary energy in this diagram. However, the total electrical output from these thermo-nuclear reactors is only about 280 GW, which is a fraction of 1.5% of the total 18,000 GW. The 5% number that is usually quoted includes the waste heat production of the nuclear power plants.

The comparison of different energy sources has large ambiguities, as the total energy efficiencies depend strongly on the type of energy carrier and of the application. If nuclear energy or coal is used to produce electric power, the efficiency is 30-50%. If electrical power is used to produce synthetic fuel for a combustion vehicle, the overall efficiency is very low. However, if electricity from a wind power station is used to charge the battery of an electric vehicle, the overall efficiency is about 80% and much higher than in the examples above [4].

The lower panel shows that the main consumers of energy are industry, transport, and residential. The rest is agriculture, public services, etc. About 10% is lost during transport or conversion.

2.2 Nuclear Energy

Nuclear power plants have been preached to be the prime future option of the industrialized countries since the 1950s, but after 65 years of extensive governmental support, nuclear power still covers only about 11% of the global electricity consumption, which is as little as 5% of the total global energy demand [5]. There is a long-lasting debate about the pros and cons of nuclear energy, and most individuals in the field have a strong and fixed opinion with well-defined arguments and counter-arguments that cover the usual spectrum of the debates [6]. In this sense, the reader is invited to skip the following three paragraphs that present the arguments of the author and that are not generally accepted by the nuclear scientific community. Nevertheless, the arguments are scientifically correct.

Even if all technical issues would be solved in future, the nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear power plants will always be subject to terrorism and proliferation [7, 8]. A significant contribution to the global energy problem requires on the order of ten thousand nuclear power plants in all regions of the world, which will be difficult or impossible to control, especially in times of rebellion or war. Recently, an old idea was brought up again by nuclear industry and is discussed by the European Parliament and elsewhere: To build small nuclear reactors in assembly line production in large numbers to make them cheaper. Trucks could ship them to the final user as one piece. The radioactive inventory would be closed in a hermetic containment (except for the unavoidable emission of radioactive gases) and the whole reactor would be recycled when the fuel is used up. This attracting idea is a nightmare for people concerned about terrorism and proliferation, as any nuclear reactor can be converted into a machine that breeds plutonium and other fuels for nuclear weapons, and its inventory can also always be used to produce dirty nuclear bombs. Some years ago, another old idea was promoted again, to move from uranium to thorium as primary fuel for nuclear reactors. It was claimed that a thorium reactor has several advantages, one of them is that there is no breeding of plutonium in the regular operation mode of these reactors. Unfortunately, today we know that the breeding of nuclear material for atomic weapons is even easier in certain thorium fuelled reactors than in uranium reactors [9]. From the author’s perspective, the following sentence is valid:

Nuclear power has always produced more problems than it has solved.

Many people believe that nuclear fusion reactors are the future of energy production, as in principle, a nuclear fusion reactor is a compact device that delivers a huge amount of power from nearly unlimited fuel, which is—depending on the technology—usually deuterium and lithium [10]. There are two technologies feasible. The first technology uses magnetic confinement. It requires cold superconducting magnets in the vicinity of the hot fusion plasma where the energy production takes place. With the advances of modern technology, it is likely that a

2.2 Nuclear Energy 9 fusion reactor will be made operational in the coming decades. However, the technological overhead of this type of reactor is so immense, that it is very unlikely that such a reactor will ever become economically competitive, especially as the special materials and expertise will not be available for the fast implementation of these devices in numerous (i.e. several thousand) copies. Due to basic physics limitation, such fusion reactors with magnetic confinement cannot be miniaturised in future.

The second fusion technology uses inertial fusion, and today a promising technology uses a combination of inertial and magnetic confinement. This technology is based on modern laser technology. If it works, it is not unlikely that it can be miniaturized in future due to the immense technical progress of lasers in the pico and femto second regime. The concept of inertial fusion can be compared with the way you make fire with a match: To light the head of a match, there has to be a small hot spot that is generated when the head is struck. Once the temperature at this spot is larger than the ignition temperature of chemical compound (e.g. sulphur), the whole head burns. A priori from the technological point of view a commercial application of inertial fusion appears much more simple compared to the magnetic devices. The danger of this technological development is that the step from inertial fusion towards a new H-bomb technology is small. Once realized, no proliferation treaty will be able to stop the technology from spreading, as it requires no fissionable nuclides to produce such a bomb. Therefore, it is not surprising that today inertial fusion is a domain of military research and mankind will be better off without it: do not foster a technology that creates more problems than it solves.

2.2.1 The Sun, Our Nuclear Reactor

Fortunately, there is a nuclear reactor in the vicinity of our planet that produces more than enough energy to keep our human business running as depicted in Fig. 2.1. The sun obtains its energy from a nuclear fusion reaction in its core where hydrogen is fused into helium [11]. As in every nuclear reactor, the nuclear reactions produce a large amount of lethal, ionizing radiation. At a distance of 150,000,000 km we are safe, fortunately. Most of the solar nuclear radiation is re-absorbed in the sun. The only carcinogenic radiation that arrives at the surface of the earth is a low level of cosmic radiation that is part of the cause for genetic mutations in life on earth and keeps Darwinian evolution running. In addition, especially at places where the ozone layer of the earth’s atmosphere is destroyed, UV radiation arrives at toxic levels and produces skin cancer.

Fortunately, the earth is still close enough to the sun, so that its radiation can be received by simple technical means like mirrors and solar panels. Solar radiation arrives with a power density of 1.36 GW/km? at our atmosphere [12]. Part of it is reflected, but most of it is absorbed by the earth and re-emitted from gases in our warm atmosphere into the cold universe. The energy need of our human society of 16,000 GW is modest compared to the total solar irradiation that arrives on earth,

Fig. 2.1 The highly radioactive sun is the fusion reactor of our choice. At a safety distance of 150,000,000 km its radiation is still so intense that this single reactor is enough to satisfy all energy needs of human civilization. Solar devices, like the solar power tower shown in the photo, can easily collect its output energy and convert it into electrical power [13]

which is 170 million GW. This irradiation is the basic source of almost all kinds of renewable energy. Not only energy from solar panels, but also energy from wind, water and biomass originates from the sun.

Also the moon contributes to our spectrum of renewable energies [14]. It is responsible for part of the geothermal heat and part of the maritime energies as tidal forces in the interior of the earth heat up our planet and tidal forces in the oceans keep the oceans moving. Part of the geothermal heat comes from natural nuclear fission and radioactive decays in the interior of our planet [15].

2.2.2 The Future of Our Planet Earth

The earth, being 4.5 billion years old, just arrived in its “mid-life crisis”, as the sun will swallow it in about 5 billion years. At that time our nuclear fusion reactor will “blow up” and will expand our sun by a factor of 100 [16]. In this respect, our energy supply is save for the next 4.5 billion years, but after that we should think about moving to another planet.

2.3. The Era of Fossil Fuels 11

2.3 The Era of Fossil Fuels

Since the beginning of the industrial age, fossil carbon has been used extensively as energy source for industrial processes, for mobility and for heating purposes. Already in the early days of industrialization, the availability of wood and other biomass was insufficient to cover the rising energy needs. Therefore, an industry has been developed to mine coal and lignite and later also oil and natural gas. Today about 80% of the total primary energy is generated by the combustion of fossil carbon.

But carbon is not only an energy carrier in our modern world; it is also a basic building block in a majority of synthetic industrial products. Almost all gadgets of modern technology contain plastics; all organic chemistry is based on carbon, including drug and certain food production. Huge amounts of hydrocarbons are used to cover our roads with asphalt. After usage, a large fraction of these carbon products will appear as pollution in the environment and in the oceans, and sooner or later they will rot or be combusted and thus reappear as CO, in the atmosphere.

Basically all our carbon products (food, fuel, plastics, asphalt, ...) originate from photosynthesis in plants. The green parts of plants make use of solar energy to crack CO, and H2O and to construct various new products from carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Prehistoric photosynthesis has generated large deposits of fossil carbon. These biological processes reduced the concentration of CO, in the atmosphere and generated an atmosphere with a large content of oxygen (21%), which was not available in the early days of our planet [17]. It is assumed that formation of coal at large scale stopped after the biological appearance of certain lignicolous fungi [18], which were able to decompose wood by cracking carbohydrates and lignin at the end of the Carboniferous, 300 million years ago. However, recent studies claim that this is not the main reason for the peak of coal production in the Carboniferous, but that instead a unique combination of climate and tectonics during Pangea formation was the reason [19].

The large concentration of O, together with the low concentration of CO, and CO in the ambient air were prerequisites for the genesis of animals, as they make use of the combustion of organic material (called cell respiration) as energy source for living. It is not surprising that CO, and CO are lethal gases, as respiration requires a large gradient of partial pressures between O and CO. A CO, concentration of 8% leads to unconsciousness and death within less than an hour, and the limits for CO are even much smaller [20]. Due to the production of fossil deposits over hundreds of millions of years, CO, has been reduced in our atmosphere to be below 0.03% long before the anatomically modern man, the homo sapiens developed about 200,000 years ago in Africa. Oxygen in combination with a low CO, concentration is the chemical prerequisite for a concentrated basal energy rate in biology. One of the organs with large energy expenditure is the brain of mammals. In this sense, the low CO, concentration in our atmosphere was a prerequisite for the high-performance brain that gifted humankind with unique

* current CO, level ——>

Š x oO

YEARS before today (0 = 1950)

Fig. 2.2 In the last 650,000 years—until 1950—the CO, concentration has always been below 300 ppm. Only in the last century, due to the burning of fossil fuels, the CO. concentration has risen above its prehistoric values. The periodic structure nicely shows how the CO, concentration slowly decreases over typically 50,000-100,000 years, while the earth’s climate system transforms into an ice age. The ice age ends abruptly (on geological time scales) due to positive feedback loops of the greenhouse effect [24]

intelligence, and with the abilities of fast learning and the usage of tools, language and fire.

Humans used a 100% renewable energy system for 200,000 years [21], including heating (biomass), mobility (sailing boats, horse-drawn carriage, camels, carrier pigeons, ...), machines driven by humans or animals (e.g. oxen in a flour mill) and machines driven by water or wind (wind and water mills) until about 1850 AD during the industrial revolution: At that time man started the usage of coal for running steam engines at large scale [22]. Since then, the balance of the extraction of CO, from the atmosphere by photosynthesis and allocation of CO2 by the decomposition of biomass is disturbed by a steady rising combustion rate of fossil fuels, which brings carbon that has been accumulated in the earth’s crust millions of years ago, back to the atmosphere at a rate of currently 17 ppm per decade (see Fig. 2.2) [23].

The increased level of CO, in today’s atmosphere is still far away from a toxic level for all breathing living, but it acts as so-called greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases are gases that are transparent for visible light, but absorb infrared radiation, just like the glass roof of a greenhouse does. The greenhouse effect is easy to understand (see Box 2.2) [25]: The atmosphere is transparent for visible sunlight; otherwise we would not see the sun during the day. The energy of the sunlight heats up the surface of the earth. If the atmosphere would be transparent for infrared radiation, the earth surface would emit the radiation back to the cold outer space and cool down drastically, just like the first men on the moon experienced it: The temperature during day/night changes by about +150 °C with an average surface temperature as cold as about —55 °C (depending on the position), even though the moon has the same average distance to the sun as the earth [26]. Because there is a certain percentage of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, the infrared heat radiation cannot easily escape to the outer space as it is reabsorbed by the greenhouse gas. This absorbed radiation energy heats up the molecules of the greenhouse gas and according to the laws of thermodynamics the heat is transferred to the neighbouring molecules (nitrogen, oxygen,...) of the surrounding air in a second step. Heat radiation is re-emitted isotropically with longer wavelength to either the outer space or back to the earth surface. The fraction of backscattered radiation leads to a significant temperature increase of the lower atmosphere and of our planet’s surface.

A major greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour. Anybody who likes to sleep outside in nature knows that usually a cloudy night is much warmer than a night with a clear sky. But why is CO, relevant, even though there is much more H20 than CO, in the air? The reason is that infrared radiation has a broad spectral distribution, and CO; is able to block some of those wavelengths which H20 cannot absorb. The absorption spectrum can be compared with a water dam which is disrupted at a certain position: The water level in the dam does not depend on how high the dam is, but how well the hole is closed where the water can escape. In this sense, the CO, concentration is the lever to control the leakage of infrared radiation from our planet.

Even though the greenhouse effect is basic physics and any student who denies it will fail his or her examination, the detailed predictions of the effects of anthropogenic CO, emissions required hard and careful work of thousands of scientists. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [27] was set up to study details and consequences of climate change. Today we know that the anthropogenic CO, emissions will cause significant global warming, climate change, extreme weather conditions, and rising sea levels.