- Energy is a popular topic right now.
Whether it's a looming economic crisis,
soaring greenhouse gas emissions,
or even geopolitical instability,
energy seems to have
a hand in all of them.
There is no shortage of articles
about the challenges we face.
Some portray a bright future,
while others paint a grim reality.
But what does that future
actually look like?
For the first video in
the "Energy" series,
we are going to look at
the current state of energy
and how it will shape our future.
You may be aware of a number
of exciting technologies,
small modular reactors,
lithium ion storage, fusion.
What makes these technologies so exciting?
If they're so great, why
aren't we using them already?
After all, the problems with
current energy production
are well documented.
As we'll see, we're caught in a trap
that is proving difficult to escape from.
The clock is ticking on some
of our major global challenges,
but fixing one problem,
might make others worse.
Understanding the trap sets the stage
for unravelling the future of energy.
Why is energy so important?
How does it affect our
greatest challenges?
What exactly is "The Global Energy Trap?"
(upbeat music)
Humans ability to harness
energy goes back, way back.
In fact, our ancestors
utilized the first biofuels
over a million years before
homosapians appeared.
We are of course, talking
about the burning of wood
and other biomaterials to generate fire.
In other words, human energy consumption
is much older than humanity itself,
we've been burning dead
matter to exploit its energy
for our entire existence.
At first we used fire to keep warm
and boost the nutritional
value of food through cooking.
Later we discovered we
could use it to craft tools.
10,000 years ago, we finally discovered
a new source of energy, animals.
Initially domesticated
for food and materials,
within 2000 years we were harnessing
the muscle power of oxen to till fields.
1000 years later, we'd create
sails to leverage wind power.
That was just beginning,
there were many more energy breakthroughs
over the following millennia.
But around 2000 years ago,
the Romans started to burn a new biofuel.
Unlike wood, this particular fuel
had been dead for a very long time.
Let's take a quick step back.
In physics, energy is an essential
property of the universe.
It can change form, but must be conserved.
You are likely aware of
many types of energy,
from heat and light to chemical
and gravitational potential.
Energy quite literally all around us,
but just because it's there,
doesn't mean we can use it.
In upcoming videos, we'll
investigate technologies
that could improve the
production, storage,
distribution and consumption of energy.
From next generation nuclear,
to local battery storage,
our energy future might
look very different indeed.
What will it take to make
these technologies viable?
The next video in this series
asks where the opportunities lie
and what is required to realize them.
But first, this video seeks to understand
why we need to upgrade our energy system,
and why we haven't done it already?
Picture yourself in Britain
at the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution.
Perhaps you could have
sensed a change was coming,
but nobody could have grasped the scale.
Traditionally, all your
energy was sourced locally,
coal was known, but it's
usage was relatively niche.
And then it wasn't.
By the end of the Industrial Revolution,
coal accounted for 90%
of energy consumption,
and the change only took 80 years.
The energy boom gave birth to steam power,
used to move pistons and spin turbines.
We no longer had to rely on
muscle power, and the result
was an unprecedented
technological acceleration.
Trains, textiles, typewriters,
the start of the modern world.
During the 19th century,
global energy usage
doubled and the effects on
society was significant.
Prior to this, growth
in energy consumption
was proportional to population growth,
but by the end of the century,
it was clear that this was no longer true.
Thanks to fossil fuels,
energy consumed per person
climbed dramatically,
and was a key factor in the
rapid population explosion.
However, while the energy doubling
of the 19th century was big,
in the next century it would grow
by a whole order of magnitude.
The world we see today is
the direct result of that.
(upbeat music)
To say we're dependent on
energy is an understatement.
The complexity of global energy,
hides just how reliant on it we are.
It's not just the lights in our house
or our journey to work.
Energy powers food
production, our water supply
and all the technologies
essential to our survival.
Everything around us, almost every aspect
of our lifestyle, requires energy.
Lots of it.
To get a better appreciation,
let's look at the pencil.
With just three to six parts,
surely understanding its energy
footprint should be easy.
Not so fast.
First you need the wood, and
there are quite a few steps.
(techno upbeat music)
Then you need the graphite.
And this is just the simplified process,
there's far more steps than I've listed.
Never mind the assembly distribution.
And we're also ignoring the
paint, adhesives, eraser
and let's not forget, the ferrule.
Perhaps even the simplified list
is longer than you initially pictured.
Well, that's only the first
level of energy dependencies,
the direct processing and
transportation inputs.
What about the energy required
to make equipment needed
to make the pencil?
If the direct energy usage is this complex
for something with just five parts,
imagine trying to list
the energy footprint
for one of the trucks, with
tens of thousands of parts?
There are many more
levels we could dive into.
Complex machinery has many sub assemblies,
built across hundreds
of different buildings.
How much energy does it
take to make a factory?
Our civilization exists
because we harness energy
on a truly massive scale.
From the physical to the digital,
everything we make, everything we consume,
it all hinges on cheap, accessible energy.
Take that away and the world grinds
to a halt, alarmingly quickly.
If we individually crafted every pencil,
the costs would be exorbitant,
and few people could afford one.
Yet despite the energy required,
a pencil costs about 10 cents.
Energy is cheap, unbelievably cheap,
and it affects the price of everything.
If it were to suddenly
become very expensive,
so would our pencils, and of course,
so would everything else.
Now that we appreciate
how integral energy is,
we can start to understand
the scale of the challenge
ahead of us, and how it sets the stage
for "The Global Energy Trap."
When talking about energy
and global challenges,
there is one topic that
gets a lot of attention.
And with good reason.
Fossil fuels account for 65%
of our greenhouse gas emissions,
making them the primary
contributor to climate change.
The Paris Climate Accords aim to limit
this century's temperature
rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius
from pre-industrial levels.
But are we on track to meet it?
No.
Last year was an emission record,
beating the previous year,
which was also a record.
As well as the year before that.
Despite our commitments,
we are actually
accelerating climate change,
faster than ever.
The challenge of meeting
our two degree limit looks daunting,
and achieving our 1.5 degree goal
appears highly implausible.
To limit the worst
effects of climate change,
we need to dramatically cut emissions.
However, the climate is
not the only problem.
Dangerous byproducts are
sometimes associated with nuclear,
however, carbon isn't the
only fossil fuel pollutant,
for instance carcinogens
and other toxic particles
produced from combustion
are far more dangerous.
And this is big problem in
many of our largest cities.
Energy scarcity and volatility
also influence geopolitics.
Competition over energy resources
are at least partially responsible
for many economic and
even military conflicts.
With all these problems,
can we continue this way?
If consumption is a major contributor,
why don't we reduce it?
(gentle music)
It's not just our
dependence on cheap energy
that makes escaping "The Global
Energy Trap" so difficult.
There are other global challenges
that will prove extremely difficult
to resolve without access to cheap energy.
Food security has been a constant battle
throughout human history.
For all our progress,
over 10% of the world
is still classified as undernourished.
While malnutrition had been falling,
in recent years, that trend has reversed.
There are many reasons for this,
however it's not our capacity to produce,
we have enough to feed everyone.
1/3 of produce is wasted
and food security is
often a localized issue,
affected by conflict and climate shocks
such as severe drought,
a problem climate change
is projected to make worse.
The FAO also cite economic downturns
as a factor that cause
and amplify food security.
Countries that experience a downturn
see a notable increase in hunger,
and economic shocks frequently create
food crises through extreme inflation.
Additionally, the cost
volatility of fossil fuels
greatly impacts food prices.
This isn't a surprise,
since the agrifood chain
accounts for 30% of global energy usage.
But while this volatility
increases food insecurity,
the second part of the
energy trap becomes apparent.
Replacing fossil fuels with a
more expensive energy source,
will drive up food prices.
Even worse, expensive energy
can greatly harm economies,
risking a slowdown that further
amplifies food insecurity.
The reason we're so
reliant on fossil fuels
is because they're cheap.
For this challenge, it
seems that we can't afford
to keep using them, yet we
can't afford to get rid of them.
For water security,
the picture is similar.
Rising temperatures will
increase average rainfall,
yet counterintuitively, global droughts
are expected to increase.
Population rise will add to the challenge.
Today, 3.6 billion people live in a region
that will experience at least one month
of water stress per year,
and that is projected to
increase to six billion in 2050.
Once again, the trap strikes.
Promising technologies
such as desalination
and vertical farming have great potential
to improve food and water security,
but they require cheap
energy to realize it.
Likewise, transportation
cost greatly impacts
these challenges and energy
cost is a significant factor.
Most food and water shortages
are tied to global poverty,
but what is energy's role?
This graph shows a strong relationship
between a country's
electricity access and its GDP.
The link is partly due poor countries
having limited access to electricity,
and partly because limited
electricity keeps countries poor.
The UN calls this the energy-poverty trap,
citing that a lack of cheap energy
exacerbates global poverty.
Once a country has sufficient wealth
to generate cheap energy,
it's able to develop and
poverty rates fall quickly.
But of course, there's a catch.
Developed economies
produce more efficiently
than developing countries,
since they can afford better technologies.
However, despite the efficiency,
people in developed countries
consume far more energy.
Resulting in a much larger footprint.
Contrary to the picture you
may have gained from the news,
the world is actually
developing very quickly,
and poverty is reducing rapidly.
For the billion people still
in poverty, this is good news.
But as the population shifts from low,
to high income economies,
the result is a projected 33% surge
in energy demand by 2040.
To make matters worse,
developing countries
struggle to afford expensive
alternative energy sources,
so that demand may end up being
delivered by fossil fuels.
"The Global Energy Trap"
illustrates the tradeoff
between our dependence on cheap energy
and the problems it creates.
It shows how we need cheap energy
to help solve some of
humans oldest challenges,
yet in doing so, make some of our
other great challenges worse.
Escape may seem overwhelming,
but the trap is built on the idea
that emission will remain
tied to energy demand.
It's often assumed that
alternative energy sources
aren't competitive with fossil fuels.
But is this still true?
We'll look in detail at
current energy usage,
to see where the opportunities lie.
We'll look at the various
ways fossil fuels are used
and what it will take to replace them.
Solar, geothermal, fission, fusion.
What capabilities will these
technologies need to achieve?
How much will they need to cost?
What will it take to escape
"The Global Energy Trap?"
Let's find out.
(upbeat music)
