how to solve energy problems

Davos 2022: We are in the middle of the first global energy crisis. Here’s how we can fix it

Fatih Birol and Hardeep Singh Puri discuss how to tackle the energy crisis at Davos 2022. Image:  World Economic Forum/Manuel Lopez

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• The global energy landscape and market has been massively reshaped by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• The long-term answer is not to replace fossil-fuel supplies but instead to focus on the energy transition.
• The Energy Outlook: Overcoming the Crisis panel at Davos discussed why the energy crisis needs to be tackled alongside other issues such as rising costs of living.

The world is in the middle of its first truly global energy crisis. The answer is not additional fossil fuels, but instead putting efforts into the energy transition, according to the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency.

Fatih Birol told the Energy Outlook: Overcoming the Crisis panel on the opening morning of Davos 2022, that the world needs to make energy investments that look beyond the immediate term and are viable for the future.

Moving to clean energy is key to combating climate change, yet in the past five years, the energy transition has stagnated.

Energy consumption and production contribute to two-thirds of global emissions, and 81% of the global energy system is still based on fossil fuels, the same percentage as 30 years ago. Plus, improvements in the energy intensity of the global economy (the amount of energy used per unit of economic activity) are slowing. In 2018 energy intensity improved by 1.2%, the slowest rate since 2010.

Effective policies, private-sector action and public-private cooperation are needed to create a more inclusive, sustainable, affordable and secure global energy system.

Benchmarking progress is essential to a successful transition. The World Economic Forum’s Energy Transition Index , which ranks 115 economies on how well they balance energy security and access with environmental sustainability and affordability, shows that the biggest challenge facing energy transition is the lack of readiness among the world’s largest emitters, including US, China, India and Russia. The 10 countries that score the highest in terms of readiness account for only 2.6% of global annual emissions.

To future-proof the global energy system, the Forum’s Centre for Energy & Materials is working on initiatives including Clean Power and Electrification , Energy and Industry Transition Intelligence, Industrial Ecosystems Transformation , and Transition Enablers to encourage and enable innovative energy investments, technologies and solutions.

Additionally, the Mission Possible Partnership (MPP) is working to assemble public and private partners to further the industry transition to set heavy industry and mobility sectors on the pathway towards net-zero emissions. MPP is an initiative created by the World Economic Forum and the Energy Transitions Commission.

Is your organisation interested in working with the World Economic Forum? Find out more here .

The global energy landscape has been radically reshaped since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, prompting governments, businesses and other organizations to reduce their dependence on Russian energy. Now they need to prioritize bringing to a halt the energy crisis and provide greater energy security and sustainability.

“We are in the middle of the first global energy crisis. In the Seventies, it was the oil crisis and now we have an oil crisis, a natural gas crisis, a coal crisis – all prices are skyrocketing and energy security is a priority for many governments, if not all,” Birol told the panel.

“Of course, we are not living in a dream world. The world has to replace the oil and gas from Russia with first oil and gas and then other technologies. I completely agree that the immediate response should include bringing additional oil and gas into the markets. But I would prefer that our immediate response does not look into our energy infrastructure for fossil fuels for many years to come.”

Key to alleviating the current energy crisis, he said, is to make the most out of the existing oil and gas fields, plus using shale oil and gas because it’s quick to come to market, as well as reducing the amount of methane emissions from fossil fuel operations and ensuring that liquefied natural gas terminals are built to store ammonia or hydrogen in the future.

“But, in my view, the biggest part of the response comes from putting emphasis on clean energy, renewables, energy efficiency and, in the countries where they have nuclear capacity, increasing nuclear production there,” he added.

"We don’t need to choose between an energy crisis and a climate crisis – we can solve both of them with the right investment."

Germany is one of the countries which had been badly hit by a dependence on Russian gas. Robert Haback, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, acknowledged that this had been a strategic error and told the panel that the country is ready to fight the energy crisis and is now looking to diversify its fossil fuel imports at incredible speed – with processes that once took decades now taking months.

“We are really improving our ability to get things done, which hasn’t been done so good in the past. We are building up energy infrastructure and trying to get new suppliers for oil and coal,” said Haback.

“But this is only short term, of course. It is only one step in the direction to become not only independent of Russian fossil fuels, but of fossil fuels. From my point of view, caring about a new security of energy supply is not a contradiction to the greater goal of getting independent from fossil fuels at all.”

Haback added that global security has been rocked by at least four interwoven crises – high inflation, the energy crisis, food poverty and the climate crisis. “And we can’t solve the problems if we only focus on one,” he warned.

“But if none of the problems are solved, I am really worried we are running into a global recession, with a tremendous effect on climate action but also on global stability. Imagine that part of the world is starving next year, it’s not only about hunger which is terrible enough, it’s about global stability.”

He added that the international community needs to stick to global markets. If countries just care about their own food and energy supplies, it will have disastrous effects on prices and other countries, Haback warned.

Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas of India, agreed that such challenges needed tackling together. “The energy crisis is there, it’s real,” he said. “Let’s make no mistake. Oil at $110 a barrel constitutes a challenge for the entire world.”

But, citing high inflation rates and the steep decline in the quality of living, he added: “We need to be able to successfully navigate out of the current crisis without adding more problems in terms of sustainability and going green.”

Catherine MacGregor, CEO of French utility giant Engie, also echoed these sentiments and stressed the importance of working together to fight the energy crisis and improve energy security and global stability and accelerating the renewable energy transition. “Because renewable energy – whether you talk about power or gas – will reinforce European energy independence, because it is energy that is produced locally.”

But she also added that there had been strong resistance against renewables such as wind farms and solar plants in much of Europe. “What I’m hoping here is that, with this crisis, this acceptability, we can transfer that and translate that into appropriation that European citizens understand that the energy transition can be a solution to that energy independence challenge that is thrown at us – of course, keeping in mind affordability.”

The panel concluded that collaboration and tackling the energy crisis needed to be done alongside action on issues such as the rising cost of living. “All stakeholders in the global system need to do some serious introspection and subject whatever they’ve been saying and doing to a reality check,” said Puri in his closing remarks.

“We need to deal with all these crises simultaneously, without allowing the solution of one crisis to exacerbate the other crisis. You’ve got to navigate your way out of the high-cost situation – this is not sustainable – at the same time you have accelerate the green energy transition.

“Taken together, yes, we will come out of it. The cost will be there, there will be pain. But at the end of the day, we’ll be working towards a better energy world."

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The world’s energy problem

The world faces two energy problems: most of our energy still produces greenhouse gas emissions, and hundreds of millions lack access to energy..

The world lacks safe, low-carbon, and cheap large-scale energy alternatives to fossil fuels. Until we scale up those alternatives the world will continue to face the two energy problems of today. The energy problem that receives most attention is the link between energy access and greenhouse gas emissions. But the world has another global energy problem that is just as big: hundreds of millions of people lack access to sufficient energy entirely, with terrible consequences to themselves and the environment.

The problem that dominates the public discussion on energy is climate change. A climate crisis endangers the natural environment around us, our wellbeing today and the wellbeing of those who come after us.

It is the production of energy that is responsible for 87% of global greenhouse gas emissions and as the chart below shows, people in the richest countries have the very highest emissions.

This chart here will guide us through the discussion of the world's energy problem. It shows the per capita CO2 emissions on the vertical axis against the average income in that country on the horizontal axis.

In countries where people have an average income between $15,000 and $20,000, per capita CO 2 emissions are close to the global average ( 4.8 tonnes CO 2 per year). In every country where people's average income is above $25,000 the average emissions per capita are higher than the global average.

The world’s CO 2 emissions have been rising quickly and reached 36.6 billion tonnes in 2018 . As long as we are emitting greenhouse gases their concentration in the atmosphere increases . To bring climate change to an end the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere needs to stabilize and to achieve this the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have to decline towards net-zero.

To bring emissions down towards net-zero will be one of the world’s biggest challenges in the years ahead. But the world’s energy problem is actually even larger than that, because the world has not one, but two energy problems.

The twin problems of global energy

The first energy problem: those that have low carbon emissions lack access to energy.

The first global energy problem relates to the left-hand side of the scatter-plot above.

People in very poor countries have very low emissions. On average, people in the US emit more carbon dioxide in 4 days than people in poor countries – such as Ethiopia, Uganda, or Malawi – emit in an entire year. 1

The reason that the emissions of the poor are low is that they lack access to modern energy and technology. The energy problem of the poorer half of the world is energy poverty . The two charts below show that large shares of people in countries with a GDP per capita of less than $25,000 do not have access to electricity and clean cooking fuels. 2

The lack of access to these technologies causes some of the worst global problems of our time.

When people lack access to modern energy sources for cooking and heating, they rely on solid fuel sources – mostly firewood, but also dung and crop waste. This comes at a massive cost to the health of people in energy poverty: indoor air pollution , which the WHO calls "the world's largest single environmental health risk." 3 For the poorest people in the world it is the largest risk factor for early death and global health research suggests that indoor air pollution is responsible for 1.6 million deaths each year, twice the death count of poor sanitation. 4

The use of wood as a source of energy also has a negative impact on the environment around us. The reliance on fuelwood is the reason why poverty is linked to deforestation. The FAO reports that on the African continent the reliance on wood as fuel is the single most important driver of forest degradation. 5 Across East, Central, and West Africa fuelwood provides more than half of the total energy. 6

Lastly, the lack of access to energy subjects people to a life in poverty. No electricity means no refrigeration of food; no washing machine or dishwasher; and no light at night. You might have seen the photos of children sitting under a street lamp at night to do their homework. 7

The first energy problem of the world is the problem of energy poverty – those that do not have sufficient access to modern energy sources suffer poor living conditions as a result.

The second energy problem: those that have access to energy produce greenhouse gas emissions that are too high

The second energy problem is the one that is more well known, and relates to the right hand-side of the scatterplot above: greenhouse gas emissions are too high.

Those that need to reduce emissions the most are the extremely rich. Diana Ivanova and Richard Wood (2020) have just shown that the richest 1% in the EU emit on average 43 tonnes of CO 2 annually – 9-times as much as the global average of 4.8 tonnes. 8

The focus on the rich, however, can give the impression that it is only the emissions of the extremely rich that are the problem. What isn’t made clear enough in the public debate is that for the world's energy supply to be sustainable the greenhouse gas emissions of the majority of the world population are currently too high. The problem is larger for the extremely rich, but it isn’t limited to them.

The Paris Agreement's goal is to keep the increase of the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and “to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”. 9

To achieve this goal emissions have to decline to net-zero within the coming decades.

Within richer countries, where few are suffering from energy poverty, even the emissions of the very poorest people are far higher. The paper by Ivanova and Wood shows that in countries like Germany, Ireland, and Greece more than 99% of households have per capita emissions of more than 2.4 tonnes per year.

The only countries that have emissions that are close to zero are those where the majority suffers from energy poverty. 10 The countries that are closest are the very poorest countries in Africa : Malawi, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But this comes at a large cost to themselves as this chart shows. In no poor country do people have living standards that are comparable to those of people in richer countries.

And since living conditions are better where GDP per capita is higher, it is also the case that CO 2 emissions are higher where living conditions are better. Emissions are high where child mortality is the lowest , where children have good access to education, and where few of them suffer from hunger .

The reason for this is that as soon as people get access to energy from fossil fuels their emissions are too high to be sustainable over the long run (see here ).

People need access to energy for a good life. But in a world where fossil fuels are the dominant source of energy, access to modern energy means that carbon emissions are too high.

The more accurate description of the second global energy problem is therefore: the majority of the world population – all those who are not very poor – have greenhouse gas emissions that are far too high to be sustainable over the long run.

The current alternatives are energy poverty or fossil-fuels and greenhouse gases

The chart here is a version of the scatter plot above and summarizes the two global energy problems: In purple are those that live in energy poverty, in blue those whose greenhouse gas emissions are too high if we want to avoid severe climate change.

So far I have looked at the global energy problem in a static way, but the world is changing  of course.

For millennia all of our ancestors lived in the pink bubble: the reliance on wood meant they suffered from indoor air pollution; the necessity of acquiring fuelwood and agricultural land meant deforestation; and minimal technology meant that our ancestors lived in conditions of extreme poverty.

In the last two centuries more and more people have moved from the purple to the blue area in the chart. In many ways this is a very positive development. Economic growth and increased access to modern energy improved people's living conditions. In rich countries almost no one dies from indoor air pollution and living conditions are much better in many ways as we've seen above. It also meant that we made progress against the ecological downside of energy poverty: The link between poverty and the reliance on fuelwood is one of the key reasons why deforestation declines with economic growth. 11 And progress in that direction has been fast: on any average day in the last decade 315,000 people in the world got access to electricity for the first time in their life.

But while living conditions improved, greenhouse gas emissions increased.

The chart shows what this meant for greenhouse gas emissions over the last generation. The chart is a version of the scatter plot above, but it shows the change over time – from 1990 to the latest available data.

The data is now also plotted on log-log scales which has the advantage that you can see the rates of change easily. On a logarithmic axis the steepness of the line corresponds to the rate of change. What the chart shows is that low- and middle-income countries increased their emissions at very similar rates.

By default the chart shows the change of income and emission for the 14 countries that are home to more than 100 million people, but you can add other countries to the chart.

What has been true in the past two decades will be true in the future. For the poorer three-quarters of the world income growth means catching up with the good living conditions of the richer world, but unless there are cheap alternatives to fossil fuels it also means catching up with the high emissions of the richer world.

Our challenge: find large-scale energy alternatives to fossil fuels that are affordable, safe and sustainable

The task for our generation is therefore twofold: since the majority of the world still lives in poor conditions, we have to continue to make progress in our fight against energy poverty. But success in this fight will only translate into good living conditions for today’s young generation when we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the same time.

Key to making progress on both of these fronts is the source of energy and its price . Those living in energy poverty cannot afford sufficient energy and those that left the worst poverty behind rely on fossil fuels to meet their energy needs.

Once we look at it this way it becomes clear that the twin energy problems are really the two sides of one big problem. We lack large-scale energy alternatives to fossil fuels that are cheap, safe, and sustainable.

This last version of the scatter plot shows what it would mean to have such energy sources at scale. It would allow the world to leave the unsustainable current alternatives behind and make the transition to the bottom right corner of the chart: the area marked with the green rectangle where emissions are net-zero and everyone has left energy poverty behind.

Without these technologies we are trapped in a world where we have only bad alternatives: Low-income countries that fail to meet the needs of the current generation; high-income countries that compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs; and middle-income countries that fail on both counts.

Since we have not developed all the technologies that are required to make this transition possible large scale innovation is required for the world to make this transition. This is the case for most sectors that cause carbon emissions , in particular in the transport (shipping, aviation, road transport) and heating sectors, but also cement production and agriculture.

One sector where we have developed several alternatives to fossil fuels is electricity. Nuclear power and renewables emit far less carbon (and are much safer) than fossil fuels. Still, as the last chart shows, their share in global electricity production hasn't changed much: only increasing from 36% to 38% in the last three decades.

But it is possible to do better. Some countries have scaled up nuclear power and renewables and are doing much better than the global average. You can see this if you change the chart to show the data for France and Sweden – in France 92% of electricity comes from low carbon sources, in Sweden it is 99%. The consequence of countries doing better in this respect should be that they are closer to the sustainable energy world of the future. The scatter plot above shows that this is the case.

But for the global energy supply – especially outside the electricity sector – the world is still far away from a solution to the world's energy problem.

Every country is still very far away from providing clean, safe, and affordable energy at a massive scale and unless we make rapid progress in developing these technologies we will remain stuck in the two unsustainable alternatives of today: energy poverty or greenhouse gas emissions.

As can be seen from the chart, the ratio of emissions is 17.49t / 0.2t = 87.45. And 365 days/87.45=4.17 days

It is worth looking into the cutoffs for what it means – according to these international statistics – to have access to energy. The cutoffs are low.

See Raising Global Energy Ambitions: The 1,000 kWh Modern Energy Minimum and IEA (2020) – Defining energy access: 2020 methodology, IEA, Paris.

WHO (2014) – Frequently Asked Questions – Ambient and Household Air Pollution and Health . Update 2014

While it is certain that the death toll of indoor air pollution is high, there are widely differing estimates. At the higher end of the spectrum, the WHO estimates a death count of more than twice that. We discuss it in our entry on indoor air pollution .

The 2018 estimate for premature deaths due to poor sanitation is from the same analysis, the Global Burden of Disease study. See here .

FAO and UNEP. 2020. The State of the World’s Forests 2020. Forests, biodiversity and people. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/ca8642en

The same report also reports that an estimated 880 million people worldwide are collecting fuelwood or producing charcoal with it.

This is according to the IEA's World Energy Balances 2020. Here is a visualization of the data.

The second largest energy source across the three regions is oil and the third is gas.

The photo shows students study under the streetlights at Conakry airport in Guinea. It was taken by Rebecca Blackwell for the Associated Press.

It was published by the New York Times here .

The global average is 4.8 tonnes per capita . The richest 1% of individuals in the EU emit 43 tonnes per capita – according to Ivanova D, Wood R (2020). The unequal distribution of household carbon footprints in Europe and its link to sustainability. Global Sustainability 3, e18, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.12

On Our World in Data my colleague Hannah Ritchie has looked into a related question and also found that the highest emissions are concentrated among a relatively small share of the global population: High-income countries are home to only 16% of the world population, yet they are responsible for almost half (46%) of the world’s emissions.

Article 2 of the Paris Agreement states the goal in section 1a: “Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”

It is an interesting question whether there are some subnational regions in richer countries where a larger group of people has extremely low emissions; it might possibly be the case in regions that rely on nuclear energy or renewables (likely hydro power) or where aforestation is happening rapidly.

Crespo Cuaresma, J., Danylo, O., Fritz, S. et al. Economic Development and Forest Cover: Evidence from Satellite Data. Sci Rep 7, 40678 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40678

Bruce N, Rehfuess E, Mehta S, et al. Indoor Air Pollution. In: Jamison DT, Breman JG, Measham AR, et al., editors. Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries. 2nd edition. Washington (DC): The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank; 2006. Chapter 42. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11760/ Co-published by Oxford University Press, New York.

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How to Solve the Energy Problem

We already have the means and ways, says engineering professor..

Reading time min

Photo: Linda A. Cicero

By Marguerite Rigoglioso

Civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson set out a grim primer on climate and energy problems in a talk at the Stanford Blood Center's Café Scientifique in March. His intent was not merely to alarm the packed room with data—all scientifically valid—about rising temperatures, rising tides and fossil fuel resources being fully depleted in 100 to 150 years. He wanted to galvanize action.

There is a solution to our environmental nightmare, Jacobson promised, and it's within our reach—if only policy makers would act on his plan. That blueprint is the result of a massive 2009 project he conducted with Mark DeLucchi, a research scientist at UC-Davis, to evaluate renewable energy sources and technologies in terms of cost, feasibility and environmental impact.

The answer comes down to wind, water and sun. By mobilizing technologies based on these abundant natural resources, we can provide 100 percent of the world's energy requirements, eliminating all need for fossil fuels within 20 to 40 years, asserted Jacobson, '88, MS '88, MS '91, PhD '94, who directs Engineering's atmosphere/energy program. "That means electricity, transportation, heating, cooling and industrial processes—everything we use energy for."

Converting to wind, hydroelectric and solar power will in itself reduce global power demand by 32 percent. It will forestall global warming, providing stable, low-cost and plentiful supplies of energy that comfortably exceed the world's needs and require minimal land areas to establish. Moreover, it will prevent the millions of health challenges and deaths that result from air pollution each year.

Among the technologies Jacobson and DeLucchi's research shows to be the best are wind, tidal and wave turbines; photovoltaic panels; battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles; hydroelectricity; and methods to capture geothermal energy, heat naturally produced and stored in the earth. "All of them work or are close to working today on a large scale; they're not distant possibilities that may exist 20 or 30 years from now," Jacobson said. "They also produce hardly any greenhouse gases and air pollutants at any time in their life cycle—from construction and operation to decommissioning.

"It's not rocket science, it's just a matter of optimization," he stressed, noting that his plan recommends combining and coordinating such technologies across a global grid. This would comfortably make up for shortfalls in any location where the sun might be clouded over or the wind becalmed.

For Jacobson, no-no's included nuclear technologies as well as some recent favorites of the ecologically minded, such as natural gas, ethanol made from corn or sugarcane, and the capture of carbon from coal. "Nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when you consider reactor construction, uranium refining and transport, and the 11 to 19 years between planning and operation of a nuclear reactor," he explained. "Carbon capture technology can reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants but will increase air pollutants—and itself requires more coal to be burned to power its own capture and storage steps. As to ethanol, even the most ecologically acceptable sources of it create air pollution that will cause the same mortality level as when gasoline is burned."

The key to Jacobson's solution is to not wait for more research and development, but use existing technologies and create national and international "supergrids" to assure transmission of energy from one place to another. "And that's a zoning and political problem, not a tech problem," he said.

Jacobson and DeLucchi's analysis strongly suggests that some wind, water and solar technologies cost more for a while, but eventually they will be as inexpensive as traditional sources. "Some combination of subsidies and carbon taxes would thus be needed for a time," Jacobson said. He recommends a tariff program to cover the difference between power generation costs and wholesale electricity prices to help scale up new technologies. Auctions in which the right to sell power to the grid goes to the lowest bidders would provide incentives for renewable energy developers to lower costs.

"With sensible policies, nations could generate 25 percent of their new energy supply with renewable sources in 10 to 15 years, and almost 100 percent of new supply in 20 to 30 years," said Jacobson, who has been giving talks to scientists and policy makers as well as guiding research. "With extremely aggressive policies, all existing fossil fuel capacity could theoretically be retired and replaced in the same period, but it's more likely that full replacement may take 40 to 50 years." Former U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, Democratic candidate for governor of Washington, has called the plan's vision "one that the United States really needs."

"Clear leadership is needed," said Jacobson, "or else nations will keep trying technologies promoted by industries rather than vetted by scientists. It's going to take ongoing education."

Marguerite Rigoglioso is a Bay Area freelance writer.

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• NATURE INDEX
• 07 September 2022

Solving the energy crisis

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The global energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February lends urgency to many nations’ plans to decarbonize, shifting from dependency on Russian fossil fuels to sustainable options. These transitions, which require considerable planning, infrastructure and collaboration, will be not easy.

Nature Index 2022 Energy

Norway is a country to watch. A major oil and gas producer and exporter, the Scandinavian nation has agreed to ramp up gas supplies to the EU in an effort to stabilize supplies. At the same time, it is committed to reducing its own greenhouse-gas emissions by 90–95% from 1990 levels by 2050, excluding carbon sinks (natural or artificial reservoirs that absorb more carbon than they release). Norway’s extensive hydropower resources, which provide 92% of its electricity, will play a key role, as will strategies focused on energy technologies, such as electric vehicles, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage, according to a recent policy review by the International Energy Agency.

Countries that favour a diversified approach to generating energy are likely to fare better over the long term. And those with strong investments in sustainable energy research will have a head-start. In this supplement, we highlight examples of high-quality research related to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 7, using our signature metric, Share , to track output in 82 natural-sciences journals.

Collaboration, not just between countries, but across sectors, is key to bringing energy technologies from the lab to the market and into homes and workplaces. It is also crucial that the needs of vulnerable and remote populations, which stand to benefit the most from cheaper and more sustainable energy technologies, are no longer overlooked in policy decision-making. As is discussed in our feature , energy policies that are developed with strong community involvement stand a greater chance of succeeding in an increasingly uncertain world.

Nature 609 , S1 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02830-5

This article is part of Nature Index 2022 Energy , an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content.

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Innovative solutions to tackle the energy crisis

One of the world’s greatest challenges for the next 50 years is to ensure enough clean, affordable and reliable sources of energy. However, this is also one of the most complex problems facing society today, and there are many technological hurdles to jump over first.

To effectively combat the energy crisis, we must reduce our reliance on non-renewable sources of energy and be more efficient in storing and using energy. At NUS, scientists are pioneering technologies to improve all aspects of these three key areas.

Renewable sources of energy

Renewable energies come from sources that are not depleted when used, such as wind or solar power, or natural processes that are replenished faster than they are used. One of the most common usages of renewable energies is the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity using the photovoltaic (PV) effect. While virtually inexhaustible and almost maintenance-free, solar PV faces some challenges that need to be addressed through continuous research and development, such as increasing the solar cell efficiency, finding alternative deployment options (as not every country has vast landmasses available, such as Singapore), and mitigating the effects on the power grid that result from the inherent variability of solar power that comes from changes in cloud cover.

This is why researchers at the NUS Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) are focusing on making solar power a cost-effective and trusted source of electricity. The bright minds at SERIS are researching everything from how to make the next generation of high-efficiency industrial solar cells, to how to predict the amount of solar energy at a particular location and time. The team, working closely with Singapore’s national water agency PUB, and the Singapore Economic Development Board, has designed and constructed the world’s largest floating solar panel testbed in Singapore’s Tengeh Reservoir as early as 2016. In consequence, SERIS is today considered as the leading applied research institute for this novel deployment option.

To push the next boundaries, SERIS is now moving its research towards near-shore and off-shore floating PV installations, in collaboration with major industrial partners. Despite a more corrosive environment and stronger mechanical forces in a marine setting, there are great opportunities of combining near-shore and off-shore floating solar with other uses to “solve more than one problem” such as food supply (combining with fish farming), green hydrogen generation (combining with electrolysis), or fresh water supply (combining with desalination).

Floating solar panels on bodies of water could help save space when collecting solar energy, but what if the same solar energy could be used to clean the water? Rather than using sunlight as renewable energy to generate electricity, Professor Ho Ghim Wei and her research group from NUS Electrical and Computer Engineering are investigating ways to use sunlight directly to create clean water sources. Her solar-enabled technology can capture, distil, and desalinate water, offering a promising solution for sustainable freshwater production at a minimal energy cost.

Beyond this, her contemporary work also demonstrates new opportunities for generating simultaneous fresh water and clean electricity by coupling solar desalination with photothermal-assisted photocatalysis hydrogen production, pyroelectricity and thermoelectricity. Such innovation relentlessly tackles the inextricably linked water–energy nexus. Notably, these solar technologies could lend themselves to compact design suitable for off-grid communities.

Because of its abundance, sunlight is one of the most commonly investigated sources of renewable energy. But there is another source of energy available which is typically overlooked when it comes to research – food waste.

Food waste remains one of the biggest waste streams in Singapore and the world. As part of the overall solution to manage food waste, Associate Professor Tong Yen Wah from NUS Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering has been looking into recovering energy from it.

His method uses a self-sustaining ‘anaerobic digester’ system that converts food scraps into resources. Essentially this anaerobic digester mimics the stomach of a cow, where the first stage acts to hydrolyse food waste, the second stage converts the hydrolysed compounds into acids and acetate, and the third stage uses anaerobic microbes to produce biogas. This biogas is completely renewable and can then be used to generate electricity just like natural gas. With this anaerobic digestion system, food waste can be managed and treated on-site where it is generated, converting it into useful resources such as electricity and fertiliser in a clean, efficient and odourless manner.

Improving energy storage

Getting energy from renewable resources is just one piece of the puzzle. The energy must also be stored so that it can be used later. For example, when energy demands are greater than supply, the energy storage systems can discharge their stockpiled energy to the grid.

Several NUS research groups are looking at innovative ways to store energy and Associate Professor Praveen Linga from NUS Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering leads one of these groups . By pioneering Solidified Natural Gas (SNG) technology, he hopes to revolutionise natural gas storage systems.

Natural gas makes over 20 per cent of the world’s electricity and accounts for 95 per cent of Singapore’s electricity. But storing and transporting natural gas in its gas state can be costly and hazardous. Assoc Prof Linga and his team have pioneered a way to rapidly convert natural gas into a non-explosive solid, which can then be easily stored and transported. While many sources of natural gas are not renewable, the team’s technology could be applied to renewable sources such as the biogas generated from food waste by Assoc Prof Tong.

Meanwhile, Assistant Professor Tan Swee Ching from NUS Materials Science and Engineering has been inspired by the natural process of photosynthesis happening in plant leaves wherein the solar energy is concurrently harvested and stored. He mimics a plant leaf in this way by developing semi-artificial photosynthetic systems.

Rather than electrically charging the energy storage devices, he directly charges them with solar energy. His recent work delves into how a single system can be a solar cell and a battery put together – harvesting light, converting it into electrical energy, and storing it at the same time. Asst Prof Tan and his team recently used multiple layers of proteins, which are derived from photosynthetic bacteria, to develop a system that can harvest solar energy to generate electrical signals and store them for future use. This research is one step closer to a self-charging battery that charges when exposed to sunlight.

In nature, plants capture sunshine, carbon dioxide, and water and convert them into glucose – an energy carrier for circulation and storage. Glucose and its derivatives are food and energy sources for plants, animals, and human beings. Inspired by nature, NUS Vice President (Research and Technology) Professor Liu Bin built the NUS Flagship Green Energy Program with a focus on capturing carbon dioxide, water splitting, and converting sunshine into energy-dense liquid fuels like methanol – the simplest alcohol fuel.

In principle, creating green alcohol fuels can be done in three steps. The first is to capture carbon dioxide from powerplants or even the atmosphere. The second is to produce hydrogen from water using solar-powered electrolysis. The last step is to react hydrogen with the captured carbon dioxide to produce methanol. Prof Liu, who is also the Head of NUS Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering , drives the multidisciplinary NUS team that researches transformative energy systems needed for the mass-production of these green alcohol fuels.

Distributing green alcohol fuels can use existing infrastructures with only slight modifications. As green fuels are renewable, they could be vital to move typical industrial processes away from fossil fuels.

Increasing efficient energy use

The final piece of the puzzle is to ensure that when energy is generated and stored, it is used with as little waste as possible. In this way, energy efficiency brings many benefits: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing energy demand, and lowering costs.

An area where energy efficiency is crucial is data centre operations. Data centres are the backbone of the digital economy, but they need to be constantly cooled to operate effectively. Maintaining such controlled environments consumes a lot of energy, resulting in high costs and carbon emissions – particularly for tropical countries like Singapore.

The new Sustainable Tropical Data Centre Testbed (STDCT), established by NUS, the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and partners in the data centre industry, will develop energy-efficient alternative cooling technologies to achieve breakthroughs in the tropical data centre environment. The S$23 million programme will pioneer green and efficient cooling solutions specifically catered to data centres in the tropics.

Other than data centres, industrial, commercial and household processes could all benefit from more efficient energy use – and these applications are the focus of the Energy Studies Institute (ESI) at NUS.

The experts at the ESI are committed to answering how economic and environmental benefits can be derived through energy efficiency and conservation. They research energy policies and their national, regional and global implications, and advance the collective understanding of issues related to energy policy development. One key research programme at ESI is the development of integrated energy system modelling and analysis frameworks. Such modelling enables integrated and focused analysis at different scales and time periods, to generate insights for policy-makers to make better decisions and trade-offs in conditions of pervasive uncertainty.

Whether it is research into renewable sources of energy, better energy storage or more efficient energy use, NUS researchers are making important contributions towards enhancing Singapore’s energy security for a brighter and sustainable future.

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The global energy crisis

• Executive summary

Key findings

• An updated roadmap to Net Zero Emissions by 2050
• Energy security in energy transitions
• Outlook for energy demand
• Outlook for electricity
• Outlook for liquid fuels
• Outlook for gaseous fuels
• Outlook for solid fuels

Cite report

IEA (2022), World Energy Outlook 2022 , IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2022, Licence: CC BY 4.0 (report); CC BY NC SA 4.0 (Annex A)

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Introduction.

The world is in the middle of a global energy crisis of unprecedented depth and complexity. Europe is at the centre of this crisis, but it is having major implications for markets, policies and economies worldwide. As so often is the case, the poorest and most vulnerable are likely to suffer most. The strains did not begin with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but they have been sharply exacerbated by it. Extraordinarily high prices are sparking a reappraisal of energy policies and priorities. The Europe-Russia energy relationship lies in tatters, calling into question the viability of decades of fossil fuel infrastructure and investment decisions built on this foundation. A profound reorientation of international energy trade is underway, bringing new market risks even as it addresses longstanding vulnerabilities.

Many of the contours of this new world are not yet fully defined, but there is no going back to the way things were. And we know from past energy crises that the process of adjustment is unlikely to be a smooth one. That adjustment will also be taking place in the context of commitments made by governments to clean energy transitions. A central theme of this World Energy Outlook 2022 is how the levers of technological change and innovation, trade and investment and behavioural shifts might drive a secure transition towards a net zero emissions energy system, while minimising the potential risks and trade-offs between various policy objectives.

• The recovery in global energy consumption that followed the pandemic-induced drop in 2020 ended prematurely with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, plunging global energy markets into turmoil, stoking inflationary pressures and slowing economic growth. The strains on markets did not begin with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but they have been sharply exacerbated by it. This has led to volatility and steep spikes in energy prices, particularly for natural gas in European markets, and the menace of further disruption to supply looms large. Amid this turmoil, growth in renewables has held up well.
• The crisis has shattered energy relationships with Russia built on the assumption of trust and secure supplies, and led to a reappraisal of energy security needs in many countries. This is leading to a recasting of the energy trade and investment landscape in profound ways. It has already prompted a host of measures aimed at strengthening energy security, including support to build domestic production capability in key sectors.
• One key question is whether today’s crisis will lead to acceleration in energy transitions, or whether a combination of economic turmoil and short-term policy choices will slow momentum. On the one hand, high fossil fuel prices and record levels of emissions offer strong reasons to move away from reliance on these fuels or to use them more efficiently. On the other, energy security concerns may spur renewed investments in fossil fuel supply and infrastructure. This Outlook considers the implications of different policy choices.
• Today’s energy crisis shares some parallels with the 1970s oil price shocks, but there are also important differences. The crises in the 1970s were concentrated in oil markets and the global economy was much more dependent on oil than it is today. However, the intensity of use of other fossil fuels has not declined to the same extent; for natural gas it has risen in many cases. The global nature of the current crisis, its spread across all fossil fuels and the knock-on effects on electricity prices are all warning signs of broader economic impacts.
• Governments made a host of commitments to sustainability in the run-up to the COP26 meeting in Glasgow in 2021, and these remain the bedrock for many energy strategies. In some cases, these ambitions have now been reinforced by new measures seeking to reinforce long-term energy security and accelerate energy transitions, including the US Inflation Reduction Act and the REPowerEU Plan. The total amount of government spending committed to clean energy transitions since the start of the pandemic amounts to USD 1.1 trillion.
• Near-term borrowing costs are likely to rise as monetary policy tightens in many countries. This could disadvantage some clean energy projects for which financing costs play a major role in levelised costs. Nonetheless, clean technologies remain the most cost-efficient option for new power generation in many countries, even before taking account of the exceptionally high prices seen in 2022 for coal and gas.
• This Outlook explores three scenarios – fully updated – that provide a framework for thinking about the future of energy and exploring the implications of various policy choices, investment trends and technology dynamics. The scenarios, which should not be considered as IEA forecasts, are:
• Stated Policies Scenario , which looks not at what governments say they will achieve, but at what they are actually doing to achieve the targets and objectives they have set out, and assesses where this leads the energy sector.
• Announced Pledges Scenario, which examines where all current announced energy and climate commitments – including net zero emissions pledges as well as commitments in areas such as energy access – would take the energy sector if implemented in full and on time.
• Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario , which maps out a way to achieve a 1.5 °C stabilisation in global average temperature and meet key energy-related UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• Rising demand for energy services to 2040 is underpinned by economic growth, which is lower to 2030 than in last year’s Outlook but which averages 2.8% per year through to 2050. The world’s population rises from 7.8 billion people in 2021 to 9.7 billion in 2050, an increase of almost one-quarter. These economic and demographic assumptions are kept constant across the various scenarios, while energy and climate policies, technology costs and prices vary.
• Cost pressures are being felt across the energy sector from persistent strains on supply chains and from higher prices for critical minerals and essential construction materials such as cement and steel. We expect recent rises in clean technology costs to be temporary, and to recede in the face of the forces of innovation and improvements in manufacturing and installation processes. Current trends are, however, prompting governments to pay closer attention to the resilience and diversity of clean energy supply chains, which cannot be taken for granted.
• Today’s exceptionally high fossil fuel prices are projected to ease as economies slow and markets rebalance, although natural gas markets remain tight for several years as Europe competes for available LNG cargoes to compensate for curtailed Russian supply. The speed of adjustment and the longer-term price trajectories differ by scenario, depending on the strength of policy action to curb demand. 
• Download the Global Energy Crisis infographic Download "Download the Global Energy Crisis infographic"

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December 12, 2012

Solution to Renewable Energy's Intermittency Problem: More Renewable Energy

A mix of offshore and onshore wind, along with contributions from solar power, could provide reliable and cost-effective power flow during all but a handful of days in a hypothetical four-year period under study

By Nathanael Massey & ClimateWire

By 2030, scaled-up green power could meet the demands of a large grid 99.9 percent of the time, according to new research from the University of Delaware.

A mix of offshore and onshore wind, along with contributions from solar power, could provide reliable power flow during all but a handful of days in the hypothetical four-year period under study.

Moreover, researchers found that scaling up renewable generation capacity to seemingly excessive levels -- more than three times the needed load, in some instances -- proved more cost-effective than scaling up storage capacity, due to the high systems costs associated with storage technology.

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"That's a lot of overbuilding," said Willett Kempton, a professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware and a co-author of the study. Much of that excess capacity would be underused during all but a few days a year, he said.

At the same time, thermal power plants face a similar problem today through inefficiency, he added.

"If you think about it, power plants burn three times the amount of fuel energy needed to produce their energy output," he said. "You burn three units of coal to get one unit of electricity."

Overgeneration would be cost effective even if all excess energy were simply dumped, according to the study. If that excess energy were harnessed -- to offset the costs of heating fuels, for example -- costs could be lowered even further.

Diversity of supply Reliability has long been the Achilles' heel of renewable energy, which depends on intermittent weather conditions like wind and sun to generate power. However, by extending enough wind turbines and solar panels over a wide enough area, it is possible to achieve approximate reliability by shifting power from active to passive regions.

The study did not assume the introduction of new, more efficient technologies, although it did form its calculations based on 2030 technology costs and energy prices. Its models incorporated four years of energy use and weather data from within PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization covering about one-fifth of the United States' total electrical system.

The simulations were run on the XSEDE supercomputer network, a project of the National Science Foundation. The researchers ran 28 billion separate simulations, sifting for the lowest possible cost to achieve varying levels of reliability for 72 gigawatts of power.

The simulations found that onshore wind power was consistently the cheapest renewable option, followed by offshore wind, with solar power and limited hydrogen energy storage coming online only when the researchers asked for near-perfect reliability.

"When we modeled to cover 30 percent of the hours under study, the least-cost scenario didn't include any offshore wind or solar, Kempton said. "When we modeled for 90 percent reliability, the scenario included both offshore and onshore wind."

It wasn't until the researchers asked for a scenario in which energy supply met demand 99.9 percent of the time that solar was brought into the picture, he said.

"Solar was more expensive than wind power, but it also matched load most closely," said Cory Budischak, an instructor at Delaware Technical Community College and co-author of the study. "It's more windy at night, but sunnier during the day when you see most of your peak demand. So at 90 percent reliability you can get by with just wind, but to get that last 9.9 percent, you really need solar."

Electric car batteries as backups By building up renewable energy capacity to around 290 percent, energy could be delivered at a low cost with very little battery storage needed, Budischak said.

"You still need battery storage, but only enough for a couple of days, rather than a couple of weeks," he said.

The researchers ran simulations based on varying levels of battery and electric car storage. Electric cars, which could be tapped during daytime hours to help meet peak demand, provide the cheapest storage option since most of their costs would be absorbed by their owners, Kempton said.

"But with cars, you run into resource constraints," Kempton said. "It's not like every person in PJM is going to have five electric vehicles."

He added, "With wind and solar we don't see the same kind of constraints."

While most analysts believe the world can -- and, if the worst effects of climate change are to be averted, must -- transfer to a predominantly renewable-based energy economy, the role of fossil fuels as backup power supply is still hotly debated.

An article in the Los Angeles Times this week cited several sources as claiming that upscaling renewable would need to be met with a corresponding rise in traditional fossil fuel power plants in order to ensure baseload power supply.

According the University of Delaware study, a large enough system of renewable energy generators could feasibly fill its own reliability gaps. "In our 99.9 percent scenario, we found that, in four years, only five times would you need to bring fossil-fuel plants back online to ensure power supply," Kempton said.

Rather than build new plants, a few of the coal or gas plants offset by new renewable supplies could be kept online to provide that backup power, he said.

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net , 202-628-6500

Topics we focus on

Solutions to the energy crisis

How to achieve sustainable energy.

Identify the causes and effects of the energy crisis, but also the solutions to bring it to an end and how you can contribute.

01. Solutions

02. Definition

04. Effects

05. Prevention

Over the last two centuries, energy needs have skyrocketed dramatically, especially because of the transportation and industry sectors. However, fossil fuel are polluting and their reserves are limited.

We know today that these resources are close to exhaustion and our societies are facing a major challenge: the energy crisis.

Energy crisis solutions

The Solar Impulse Label is granted to innovative solutions to energy crisis that meet high standards of sustainability and profitability.

Each solution goes through a strict assessment process performed by independent experts.

DSM Endurance backsheet

A fully recyclable rear-side film providing long-term protection to solar panels

• Industrial Processes & Consumer Goods

Deodorization and decontamination unit with energy recovery for factories

• Utilities (Water, Energy, Waste)

Pressure Focusing Layer (PFL) process

Design special molds for the manufacture of thermoset and thermoplastic composites

An eco-designed and connected stationary fitness equipment for renewable energy production

• Buildings & Constructions

InteliPipes

Ai-powered tool for smart water management and pipelines risk identification

denaLi Direct Lithium Extraction

Technology for environmentally sustainable, rapid and economic lithium extraction

A software that reduces the costs and carbon footprint of the home energy renovation projects

Connecting electric devices to drive the energy transition

The Waste Transformers

Turning non-consumable organic waste into clean energy & fertilizer on site

• Agrifood & Natural Environment

CONTAINWATT

An autonomous convertible shelter to generate green electricity in isolated places

Routing Engine for Electric Vehicles

Smart ev routing making charging and driving evs effortless and efficient

Imitating nature with bioluminescence to jump-start the bio-economy

What is the energy crisis?

The energy crisis stems from the foreseeable end of the cycle of oil, gas and coal, which, in addition, have been producing a considerable increase in greenhouse gases (GHG). In recent years, many scientists have raised their voice to warn about climate change, caused notably by the burning of oil and coal in order to produce energy.

Energy crisis causes

Global energy consumption is increasing and we will face a shortage of fossil fuels in the coming decades. Therefore, the availability of reserves is an important source of concern.

Overconsumption

Our current consumption model relies almost entirely on the use of non-renewable energy sources such as oil, gas, coal and uranium. At the current rate of consumption, oil will be the first fossil fuel to run out. According to projections, there would be between 40 and 60 years of proven reserves of conventional oil. Natural gas could be exploited for another 70 years. For coal, there would be around two centuries of reserves.

Overpopulation

These data are to be put into perspective because they are based on current consumption, while it is clear that it will increase considerably. Energy demands are and will be amplified by the demographic - the world’s population should reach nearly 10 billion people in 2050 - and economic boom of growing areas. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global energy demand could increase by more than 50% by 2030 in the absence of public policies in this area.

Aging infrastructure

Another reason for energy shortage and scarcity is the poor infrastructure of power generating equipment. Most of energy producing companies keep on using outdated equipments that limits energy production. The need to upgrade the infrastructure and set a high standard of performance is critical.

Energy waste

Mainly coming from the unnecessary use of energy resources, energy waste describes the wastage of energy sources, in particular fuels and electricity. Consequently, the reduction of waste is a colossal source of energy savings, which requires actions both on an individual and collective level.

Energy crisis effects

Environmental

The massive use of traditional energy sources leads - among other things - to the increase of greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO2), resulting in global warming and harming the environment and biodiversity. Therefore, the energy crisis is closely linked to the environmental crisis.

Economic and socio-political

Energy security is one of the major concerns of the main economic centers of the planet. In fact, energy conditions the possibility of growth, which is essential to the market economy and its development model. The energy crisis could thus have a dramatic impact on the global economy. Besides, when energy markets fail, an energy shortage develops. Energy shortages and resulting economic factors may create socio-political issues.

Energy crisis prevention

The good news is that there are ways to reduce the energy crisis :

1. Energy transition to renewable energy sources

Unlike fossil fuels, some energy sources are totally renewable, and do not emit greenhouse gases. These clean and sustainable alternative energy solutions include solar energy , hydropower , wind energy, geothermal energy and biomass energy .

2. Energy efficiency and conservation

In order to prevent an energy crisis, it is also crucial that we consume less energy by improving and modernising energy infrastructure such as smart grid solutions , and smart cities . It is also important that we replace old devices by energy efficient solutions, such as replacing traditional light bulbs by LEDs.

A challenge, #1000 Solutions to change the world

A label focused on both the environment and profitability.

For the first time a label proves the economic profitability of solutions that protect the environment. The Solar Impulse Foundation is selecting 1,000 solutions that protect the environment in a profitable way and awarding them the Solar Impulse Efficient Solutions Label.

Collaborating with independent experts and with renowned institutions, the World Alliance proposes to evaluate its members solutions free of charge. The Solar Impulse Efficient Solutions label will offer a competitive edge to innovators and a guarantee of quality to solution seekers.

A chance to be labelled in the 1000 solutions portfolio

Submit your solution now

Solving the Energy Problem

William Schreiber

Global warming is now almost universally accepted as a serious problem caused by human activity – mainly burning fossil fuels – that demands strong remedial action as soon as possible. Past events, such as the temporary boycott by some of the major petroleum producers in the ’70s, showed that the US also has a national security problem related to both price and availability of one of our main energy sources. This note is intended as a contribution to the effort to devise a comprehensive solution to all aspects of the energy problem.

Many others have also recognized various aspects of the problem and the need for a rapid response. I have found that most workers in this field have not completely defined the problem, but nevertheless have some favorite solutions to be exclusively pursued.

When I began my engineering education long ago, I was lucky enough to have had the tutelage of experienced engineers, not scientists. They all said (preached, actually) that the indispensable first step in devising a solution in the real world was to define the problem.

What is the energy problem? It has several parts.

In the early ’70s, the temporary boycott of the world market by OPEC caused the price of petroleum to rise dramatically, as petroleum is the most common source of energy used in heat generation, production, commerce, transportation, and residential facilities. (1) The ability of major petroleum producers to withhold the supply reveals the importance of energy independence and price.

(2) More recently, global warming has become unmistakably important with widespread melting of ice, noticeable climate changes, and rising sea levels. This is now recognized by nearly everyone as caused by greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, produced by burning fossil fuels such as petroleum, coal, and natural gas. While nuclear power plants are being advocated by some, dealing with spent nuclear fuel is as problematic as greenhouse gases, and energy must be used to produce nuclear fuel. Note there is now a worldwide shortage of nuclear fuel.

Others are pushing ethanol, which is such a bad idea that it is hard to understand how its use has become as widespread as it has.

Ethanol’s production consumes nearly as much energy as it provides, and its use generates greenhouse gas. With only about 1% of gasoline now replaced by ethanol, some growers of corn have become rich, but many growers of domestic animals for food are in dire straits because of the unanticipated rise in the price of feed corn.

Solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power, nuclear power, hydrogen power, methane from buried organic material, and other renewable power sources are advocated by some, but so far, no solution has been proposed that would be both affordable and complete. The purpose of this paper is to propose such a complete solution, the development of which requires only resources that we already have in abundance.

Unless, by some miracle, we find a substitute for petroleum fuel that can be used with the same technology we use today, takes no energy to produce, has no noxious residue, and has no unexpected consequences (like raising the price of corn) its adoption will require rebuilding our entire energy infrastructure. This will be neither easy nor cheap, but if we hope to preserve the Earth for our descendents, we have no choice but to act now. This will involve diverting manpower and funds from current uses. If we examine how these resources are now being used, military applications will be found high on the list. Many of us believe that such diversions would make our world a better place in which to live. The decisions, of course, will be political, which is beyond the scope of this short paper.

Though expensive to build, the proposed system, which abandons fossil fuels, should be cheap to operate, as the fuel, which is sunlight, has no operating cost.

Some preliminaries

All the energy the earth has stored and almost all of the energy it receives every day comes from the Sun. About 89,000 terawatts (1 TW = a million million (quadrillion) watts) falls on the Earth, while total usage (in 2004) was only 15 terawatts, of which 87% was provided by fossil fuels. Their use produces most of the global warming that has become so obvious. If we were to get most of our useable energy from the Sun, we would solve many of the most important problems, including the price and availability of petroleum as well as (3) the noxious by-products associated with using nuclear power and fossil fuels . (4) Relying on the Sun rather than petroleum would also permit us to be much less involved with events in the Middle East. (Anybody who does not realize how advantageous this would be is urged to read Seymour Hersh’s “Annals of National Security” in The New Yorker of 5 March 2007.)

Cleaning carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases such as water vapor) from the Earth’s current atmosphere is not one of my fields of expertise, but greatly reducing the rate at which we increase it is clearly a good idea. (Perhaps we shall discover that if we stop adding these gases to the atmosphere, the existing unwanted gases will slowly dissipate.) A way to do this is to move to an electrical economy, producing electricity from sunlight, and then replacing as much of other fuels as possible by electricity. There is cost associated with this, but mostly new technology is not required. The one field in which this is not yet completely possible is transportation, where better batteries (or their functional equivalent) are needed. Fortunately, we still have a lot of competence in developing new technology, in spite of losing a good part of our manufacturing skills. (A very promising battery project is underway at MIT.)

Solar power at present is faulted for being available only during clear days, for requiring expensive solar cells of limited efficiency and life, and for not having enough space for the receptors in crowded areas such as cities. This proposal concentrates on dealing with these issues.

The main idea

When I was teaching in India in the ’60s, I learned that some irrigation pumps were solar-powered without using any electrical components. Small collectors concentrated sunlight sufficiently to produce steam of high enough temperature and pressure to operate water pumps. (The motivation was that pilferage of electrical components, even copper wire, was then a problem in the outlying areas where the apparatus was often located.) This idea is one of the elements in the proposal.

The other [idea] is to collect the sunlight on large steerable, focusable mirrors in geostationary orbit that would direct the reflected light onto much smaller receptors on the ground.

(The orbits would be inclined so that the mirrors would never be in the shadow of the earth.) Initially, the receptors would be located near existing hydroelectric plants, where solar-powered pumps would be used to move water up into the lake(s) behind the dam(s) for energy storage. At NASA, we have the skills to develop such devices as the mirrors and perhaps even have the money if we give up such projects as the space station, which produce no noticeable benefits for mankind. Should the initial installations prove workable, new plants could be built in more remote locations.

Solar power like the kind I saw in India is still used to some extent in the U.S. Heating of swimming pools seems to be the largest application. Some is used for domestic hot water and some for space heating. Numerous small companies are in the business of making and selling the collectors and the receptors for the various applications. The same is true today in India.

The orbiting mirrors would be, perhaps, a mile in diameter. They would be constructed as transparent inflatable thin balloons, one of the inside surfaces of which would be aluminized to provide the reflecting surface for the required concave mirror. The mirrors would be lifted into orbit while folded, the inflated shape being determined by the thickness of the plastic or other material and by the pressure. It is likely that spherical reflectors would be adequate, and the focal length could be adjusted by the pressure, thus avoiding high precision in their manufacture. Communication satellites already use slanted orbits and incorporate sufficiently accurate steering mechanisms.

Note that since the Sun apparently moves through the sky while the mirror apparently remains fixed to viewers on the Earth, the angle of incidence of the sunlight on the mirror changes. Thus the mirror must be constantly redirected. This is preferably done by using feedback from small sensors located around the edge of the mirror to the steering mechanism of the satellite carrying the mirror. These same sensors can also be used to adjust the focal length of the concave reflector by adjusting the air pressure inside the plastic balloon so that the incident beam just fills the receptor surface.

At the surface of the Earth, incoming solar radiation in clear weather averages something over 300 watts/sq. meter, but it is much higher and nearly constant above the atmosphere. Measurements show the “solar constant” to be about 1366 watts/sq. meter.

A reflector about 5000 feet in diameter thus collects about 3000 megawatts, which is comparable to the capacity of a typical terrestrial electric power plant.

I am guessing that collectors might be 500 feet in diameter, but this must be verified. The fraction of the collected power that would be received by the collectors depends on the weather, and the fraction of that which becomes useful heat to make steam and drive pumps remains to be seen.

Close to populated areas, it may be necessary to stop the transmission at night. For these reasons, storage of the collected energy is essential, which makes the use of dams holding pumped water a vital part of these systems. The ability to defocus the mirrors is also important.

One of the reasons for using the solar energy directly to produce steam and drive pumps is that solar electric cells, besides being expensive, are not very efficient in converting light into electricity, and need replacement from time to time. At best, the efficiency is about 20%, the rest of the light energy appearing as heat, which limits the intensity of light that can be handled. There is no such limitation when converting the incoming power into steam, but there probably are some limitations from safety considerations. However the efficiency is surely higher than that of solar cells.

Space debris

It has been known for some time that thousands of pieces of debris, some very large but most very small, abandoned from previous launches, are in orbit around the Earth. Some objects that have been returned, such as shuttle vehicles, have been found to have suffered minor damage from impact with small pieces. This raises concern for us, since the mirrors we propose to place in orbit are actually quite fragile. Fortunately, almost all space junk is in much lower orbit, where it will eventually burn up as it enters the Earth’s atmosphere.

There are two possible approaches to deal with this problem. One is to make the mirrors less fragile by abandoning the balloon approach and providing a structure to support a single-surface properly shaped mirror. The other is to provide redundancy by placing two or more mirrors in orbit for each receiving location on the ground. The balloon approach is very attractive because it enables focus to be controlled by pressure, rather than making and then placing in orbit a very precise mirror.

Although the redundancy approach seems better to me, my inclination is to leave the final decisions to the engineers who will do the actual design, hopefully from NASA.

More thoughts

This proposal need not be the only scheme used. Higher efficiency in systems that do burn carbon-containing fuels would lessen, but not eliminate contamination of the atmosphere. Conservation, wind power, tidal power, and any other schemes that do not burn fossil or carbon-containing fuels may also be used. I have no special knowledge about hydrogen fuel cells, except to note that water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. Carbon sequestration seems to involve significant new technology and does not free us from the grip of OPEC.

Many of the numbers used here are from Wikipedia, “World energy resources and consumption.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy:_world_resources_and_consumption

This piece also has a very good list of additional references. It is well written and apparently accurate. However it uses the words “energy” and “power” as synonyms in many instances, much to the discomfort of technically trained persons, such as myself. In this paper, I have used these two terms only in their technical sense. Power (typical unit is watt) is the rate of providing energy (typical units are BTU – British thermal units – or joules).

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Kinetic energy problems

When solving kinetic energy problems, you may be asked to find 3 variables. These variables are the kinetic energy, the mass, or the speed.

Problem # 1:

Suppose a car has 3000 Joules of kinetic energy. What will be its kinetic energy if the speed is doubled? What if the speed is tripled?

We already proved in kinetic energy lesson that whenever the speed is doubled, the kinetic energy is quadrupled or four times as big.

4 × 3000 = 12000

Therefore, the kinetic energy is going to be 12000 joules.

Let v be the speed of a moving object. Let speed =  3v after the speed is tripled. 

9 × 3000 = 27000

Therefore, the kinetic energy is going to be 27000 joules.

Problem # 2:

Calculate the kinetic energy of a 10 kg object moving with a speed of 5 m/s. Calculate the kinetic energy again when the speed is doubled.

Tricky kinetic energy problems

Problem # 3: 

Suppose a rat and a rhino are running with the same kinetic energy. Which one do you think is going faster?

The only tricky and hard part is to use the kinetic energy formula to solve for v.

Multiply both sides by 2

Problem # 4: 

The kinetic energy of an object is 8 times bigger than the mass. Is it possible to get speed of the object?

Think carefully and try to solve this problem yourself.

Potential energy

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Mechanical Energy Problem Solutions

Mechanical energy problems and solutions.

See examples of mechanical energy problems involving kinetic energy, potential energy, and the conservation of energy. Check your work with ours.

1. How much gravitational potential energy do you have when you lift a 15 N object 10 meters off the ground?

2. How much gravitational potential energy is in a 20 kg mass when 0.6 meters above the ground?

3. How much gravitational potential energy does a 35 kg boulder have when 30 meters off the ground?

4. How many times greater is an objects potential energy when three times higher?

If you need help on ratio problems click the link below:

Rule of Ones: analyzing equations to determine how other variables change

5.  How much kinetic energy does a 0.15 kg ball thrown at 24 m/s have?

6.  How many times greater is the kinetic energy of a ball that is going five times faster?

7.  How much kinetic energy does a 1.2 kg ball have the moment it hits the ground 3.5 meters below when it starts from rest?

I cancelled out the initial kinetic energy because:

• KE i = ½ mv f 2
• KE i = (½)(3.5)(0 2 ) = 0 J

I cancelled out the final potential energy because:

• PE f = mgh f
• PE f = (3.5)(9.8)(0) = 0 J

8.  How fast is a 1.2 kg ball traveling the moment it hits the ground 3.5 meters below when it starts from rest?

(Note: In many of these problems I could cancel out mass but did not since it was provided)

Since I did not cancel out mass I could answer the following questions if asked:

• How much mechanical energy did you have at the beginning? (41.6 J)
• How much kinetic energy did you have at the beginning? (0 J)
• How much potential energy did you have at the beginning? (41.6 J)
• How much potential energy do you have at the end? (0 J)

If I cancelled out mass in my work it would not show the actual initial potential energy since PE i = mgh and not just gh.

9.  A 3.5 kg ball fell from a height of 12 meters.  How fast is it traveling when its still 5 meters off the ground?

10. An 85kg roller coaster cart is traveling 4 m/s at the top of a hill 50 meters off the ground.  How fast is it traveling at top of a second hill 20 meters off the ground?

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Mechanics: Work, Energy and Power

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Course: physics library   >   unit 5.

• Introduction to work and energy
• Work and energy (part 2)
• Conservation of energy
• What are energy and work?
• What is kinetic energy?
• What is gravitational potential energy?
• What is conservation of energy?
• Work and the work-energy principle
• Work as the transfer of energy
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• Thermal energy from friction
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Work/energy problem with friction

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Potential And Kinetic Energy Example Problem – Work and Energy Examples

Potential energy is energy attributed to an object by virtue of its position. When the position is changed, the total energy remains unchanged but some potential energy gets converted into kinetic energy . The frictionless roller coaster is a classic potential and kinetic energy example problem.

The roller coaster problem shows how to use the conservation of energy to find the velocity or position or a cart on a frictionless track with different heights. The total energy of the cart is expressed as a sum of its gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy. This total energy remains constant across the length of the track.

Potential And Kinetic Energy Example Problem

A cart travels along a frictionless roller coaster track. At point A, the cart is 10 m above the ground and traveling at 2 m/s. A) What is the velocity at point B when the cart reaches the ground? B) What is the velocity of the cart at point C when the cart reaches a height of 3 m? C) What is the maximum height the cart can reach before the cart stops?

The total energy of the cart is expressed by the sum of its potential energy and its kinetic energy.

Potential energy of an object in a gravitational field is expressed by the formula

where PE is the potential energy m is the mass of the object g is the acceleration due to gravity = 9.8 m/s 2 h is the height above the measured surface.

Kinetic energy is the energy of the object in motion. It is expressed by the formula

KE = ½mv 2

where KE is the kinetic energy m is the mass of the object v is the velocity of the object.

The total energy of the system is conserved at any point of the system. The total energy is the sum of the potential energy and the kinetic energy.

Total E = KE + PE

To find the velocity or position, we need to find this total energy. At point A, we know both the velocity and the position of the cart.

Total E = KE + PE Total E = ½mv 2  + mgh Total E = ½m(2 m/s) 2  + m(9.8 m/s 2 )(10 m) Total E = ½m(4 m 2 /s 2 ) + m(98 m 2 /s 2 ) Total E = m(2 m 2 /s 2 ) + m(98 m 2 /s 2 ) Total E = m(100 m 2 /s 2 )

We can leave the mass value as it appears for now. As we complete each part, you will see what happens to this variable.

The cart is at ground level at point B, so h = 0 m.

Total E = ½mv 2  + mgh Total E = ½mv 2  + mg(0 m) Total E = ½mv 2

All of the energy at this point is kinetic energy. Since total energy is conserved, the total energy at point B is the same as the total energy at point A.

Total E at A = Total Energy at B m(100 m 2 /s 2 ) = ½mv 2

Divide both sides by m 100 m 2 /s 2 = ½v 2

Multiply both sides by 2 200 m 2 /s 2 = v 2

v = 14.1 m/s

The velocity at point B is 14.1 m/s.

At point C, we know only a value for h (h = 3 m).

Total E = ½mv 2 + mgh Total E = ½mv 2 + mg(3 m)

As before, the total energy is conserved. Total energy at A = total energy at C.

m(100 m 2 /s 2 ) = ½mv 2 + m(9.8 m/s 2 )(3 m) m(100 m 2 /s 2 ) = ½mv 2 + m(29.4 m 2 /s 2 )

Divide both sides by m

100 m 2 /s 2 = ½v 2 + 29.4 m 2 /s 2 ½v 2 = (100 – 29.4) m 2 /s 2 ½v 2 = 70.6 m 2 /s 2 v 2 = 141.2 m 2 /s 2 v = 11.9 m/s

The velocity at point C is 11.9 m/s.

The cart will reach its maximum height when the cart stops or v = 0 m/s.

Total E = ½mv 2 + mgh Total E = ½m(0 m/s) 2 + mgh Total E = mgh

Since total energy is conserved, the total energy at point A is the same as the total energy at point D.

m(100 m 2 /s 2 ) = mgh

100 m 2 /s 2  = gh

100 m 2 /s 2  = (9.8 m/s 2 ) h

The maximum height of the cart is 10.2 m.

A) The velocity of the cart at ground level is 14.1 m/s. B) The velocity of the cart at a height of 3 m is 11.9 m/s. C) The maximum height of the cart is 10.2 m.

This type of problem has one main key point: total energy is conserved at all points of the system. If you know the total energy at one point, you know the total energy at all points.

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Cosmic clues: DESI, dark energy, and the cosmological constant problem

• Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
• Open access
• Published: 30 May 2024
• Volume 2024 , article number  327 , ( 2024 )

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• Wen Yin   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8785-6351 1  

A preprint version of the article is available at arXiv.

Several attempts to solve the cosmological constant problem, which concerns the value of the cosmological constant being extremely smaller than the Standard Model mass scales, have introduced a scalar field with a very flat potential that can be approximated as linear around any given position. The scalar field scans the cosmological constant in such a way that the current small value is explained. Recently, Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) reported the results of the first year. Combining the data with CMB, Pantheon, Union3, and/or DES-SN5YR, there is a preference or anomaly, indicating that the dark energy in the current Universe slightly deviates from that in the ΛCDM model and varies over time. In this paper, I show that the simple linear potential of a scalar field that may explain the small cosmological constant, can explain the DESI anomaly. The conclusions do not change by including or not including a thermal friction effect. In particular, the model proposed by the present author in [1], which relaxes the cosmological constant by the condition that inflation ends, predicts a time-dependence of the dark energy close to the one favored by the data.

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Acknowledgments

WY was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 20H05851, 22K14029, 22H01215, and 23K22486.

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Yin, W. Cosmic clues: DESI, dark energy, and the cosmological constant problem. J. High Energ. Phys. 2024 , 327 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP05(2024)327

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP05(2024)327

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