Renewable Energy needs system solutions – urgently!

In the wake of the earthquake in Japan and the subsequent problems with several nuclear plants, people are beginning to doubt nuclear energy more and more. Many say that we need to replace nuclear energy with renewable energies. But do they consider the amounts of energy that will be needed to replace nuclear energy?

Nuclear energy, in 2035, is estimated to be supplying around 1 Gtep (= 1´000´000´000 tep or ton equivalent petrol) of the total 20 Gtep of yearly energy needed by our civilization, amounting to roughly 5% of the total primary energy. Likewise, in 2035, new renewable energy (i.e. without hydro, biomass and waste energy) will be providing only about 2 to 3% of the total energy demand! This shows that new types of renewable energies (mainly solar, wind and geothermal) will by far not even be able to compensate an exit from nuclear energy! Should this remain true, then our civilization will just die from lack of energy.

We need to find new avenues urgently!

For renewable energies sources to replace a much higher percentage of today´s energy sources, they have to fulfill a number of requirements:
• They must be able to provide energy globally, not only locally
• They must be able to provide huge, staggering amounts of energy
• They must be available to provide energy 24 hours a day, and seven days a week
• They must provide energy at very low cost
• They have to be as compatible as possible to the established energy infrastructure

Today, we follow a completely wrong track. We follow a track of a technology push. Many people believe that “PV” and “wind” will be providing the energy of the future (and most governments are stuck there, too). But: PV can never provide 24 hours a day energy supply and it will always be expensive, independent of the PV costs themselves. What is more: Electric energy is hard to store, and expensive to transport over large distances. For these reasons, PV cannot provide a global energy solution. Wind energy, hailed as an unlimited energy source, will never be available globally and will always remain too expensive.

It is time to change our paradigms!

We must put our main stakes on solar energy – because it is the only energy that provides a truly large scale global energy pool.

We need to get the energy where it is cheapest – between latitudes of 20° north and 20° south.
We need to find ways to convert heat and/or electricity to chemical energy (solar fuel, e.g. methane), so that it becomes easily transportable globally, just as natural gas today. Energy in chemical form is by far the least expensive to transport, if it liquefies above -180 °C (see LNG, liquefied natural gas)
We must think big, and bigger than big!

Very large thermal solar plants need to be established in prime solar locations, like northern Chile, north-west Australia, eastern Africa, the Middle East and others. These large solar plants provide (through thermal energy storage systems) an almost constant energy output over 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. The seasonal variation of the solar radiation is small due to the fact that they are located between the tropic of cancer and the tropic of Capricorn. Ideally, the thermal energy will be directly converted into chemical energy (which, so far, is not yet industrially possible), or else the thermal energy will be converted first into electric energy, and then into chemical energy. The “solar fuel” generated in this way will be transported (as natural gas is transported today) by tankers and/or pipelines from regions near the equator to regions further north (Europe, North America, Asia etc.) or south (South America, Africa etc.). This solar fuel fits perfectly to the existing immensely large infrastructure for gas transport, and it fits also impeccably to all combustion engines and thermal electricity power plants, again saving an immense amount of stranded assets.

For all of this to happen, we need to be pursuing the right type of research, to achieve a complete solution. Local small solar systems are excellent to gain experiences and test technologies – but they cannot solve our energy dilemma!

It is five minutes before midnight, so let us move!

Thomas Hinderling, Chairman & CEO, Nolaris