Towards the Energy of the Future - the invisible revolution behind the electrical socket E-Book

Brounéus Fredrik

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 141

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Energy is everywhere. We just assume that it will always be there whenever we need to warm up our houses, cook dinner, use our computers, mobile phones, escalators, X-ray machines, tower cranes, buses, trains, airplanes and cars. It is a given, yet often invisible - and unfortunately unsustainable part of our lives. Today we know that the global energy system needs to be transformed to its core. This is crucial if we are to succeed in tackling climate change and creating a sustainable society. And we all have important parts to play in this transition. But how do we change something that we cannot see? In this anthology, some of Sweden's leading energy researchers share their views on familiar and less familiar challenges and solutions regarding the energy of the future. The aim is to stimulate discussion and constructive debate so that we can address the challenges in an open dialogue where facts and knowledge shape our future. The book is written by researchers affiliated with the KTH Royal Institute of Technology Energy Platform, in collaboration with the non-profit organisation VA (Public & Science).

Leseprobe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

What is energy?

Matthäus Bäbler & Fredrik Brounéus

What is electricity?

Lina Bertling Tjernberg

Energy in a historical perspective

Per Högselius

A sustainable society cannot afford to waste energy

Christophe Duwig

Shaping energy projects and policies with the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Francesco Fuso Nerini

Oil (and gas) addiction

Christophe Duwig

Biomass – a versatile natural resource

Henrik Kusar

Energy from excreta: harnessing energy from one of the most abundant materials on the planet

Daniel Ddiba

Back to the future with hydrogen

Ann Cornell

Materials – a tangible challenge for the electrification of society

Kerstin Forsberg & Christopher Hulme

Sustainable electricity grids – a prerequisite for the energy system of the future

Lina Bertling Tjernberg

Nuclear power of the future

Pär Olsson

Homes in the smart grid

Cecilia Katzeff

The Internet of Things

Carlo Fischione

Cyber security in the energy system

Fredrik Heiding

Authors

PREFACE

Energy is everywhere. It is inseparable from our everyday lives – what would we do without electricity, chemicals or heat? Despite being completely dependent on energy, and being surrounded by it everywhere we go, it is often invisible to us.

This anthology is written by researchers connected to the KTH Energy Platform, in collaboration with the non-profit organisation VA (Public & Science). The platform is an arena where we researchers learn from each other and create new ideas for understanding our world and the challenges we are facing. Energy is an incredibly complex area and not even the brightest scientists on the planet understand it all. Together, however, we are slowly advancing the knowledge, every day aiming to understand more for the benefit of the world. This togetherness is key, and our platform is an open place where it can happen.

To tackle climate change, our energy system needs to be transformed almost entirely in about two decades. It will be a historically unparalleled process, where there is no ready-to-go plan at hand. As researchers, our role is to enable the necessary changes by creating knowledge. We do not make the political decisions, but we are supplying the knowledge to make them successful.

It is often challenging to discuss and analyse complex problems in the societal debate. The media is looking for attractive headlines and short punchlines. In a polarised political climate, parties may be over-simplifying arguments to please voters while ignoring the complexity of the issues at hand. The tone of such debates often seems the opposite of the discussions we researchers enjoy with colleagues, and the pleasure we take in learning and sharing different discoveries and insights.

The challenges we are facing today call for a knowledge-driven transformation to create a sustainable society. All the challenges are complex – many, by nature, in conflict with each other. That is why we need to address them together, in an open arena where facts and knowledge shape our way of working. In our work, we must also be completely open about the inherent uncertainty in this transformation and where it will take us.

A democratic society rests upon well-informed and engaged citizens. With this book we want to share some of the complexities that we encounter in our research. Our hope is that readers will appreciate these fascinating research questions and also gain an understanding of the world and the upcoming challenges our society faces in terms of energy.

Perhaps you will find some facts and ideas to share with friends and family, or topics to power constructive discussions at coffee breaks, parties, or family dinners? If so, please join us in our aim to spread knowledge and inspire curiosity about energy, by communicating facts and taking an active part in the debate – wherever it may be taking place.

Lina Bertling Tjernberg, Director KTH Energy Platform

Christophe Duwig, Deputy Director KTH Energy Platform

WHAT IS ENERGY?

Matthäus Bäbler & Fredrik Brounéus

As stated in the beginning of this book, energy is everywhere. We are literally and physically surrounded by it, completely dependent on it, and it is now a fundamental part of our lives. It is heating our homes, powering our computers, mobile phones, home appliances, buses, trains, airplanes and cars. We were painstakingly reminded of this in the wake of the events of spring 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed how interdependent and fragile our global energy relations are. Geopolitics aside, energy was already a major talking point on the public agenda. During the past decades we have come to an alarming realisation that the resources of our planet are finite, and that if we continue to exploit them the way that we have done historically, there will be dire consequences for future generations. We also know that we urgently need to cut down on the fossil fuels that are powering most of our everyday lives, or else carbon emissions will accelerate climate change to a point where it will set in motion events far beyond human control (read more in chapter about the oil dependency). At the same time, our global village of humans is steadily increasing in size and living standards, steadily increasing its consumption of energy. When talking about living standards we not only mean factors that add convenience or luxury to our lives, such as cars, TVs and holiday travel. Fundamental functions of a modern society such as healthcare, communication, education and the production and transport of necessary goods such as food, clothes and building materials, all require energy.

Let us now leave this somber line of thought for a while, take a step back and ask: What is energy? From the viewpoint of natural science, energy is a physical quantity defined as the capacity of a system for performing work. More energy in the system – higher capacity for doing work. This physical quantity can take a number of different forms, such as electricity, heat, motion or radiation (see Figure 1). From an economic and societal viewpoint, energy can be seen as a commodity that our human society can produce, transfer, trade and consume. Just like the physical quantity, this commodity can exist in different forms, such as electricity or heat, in every stage of the production, transfer, trade and consumption process (see Figure 2).

Figure 1: Energy as a physical quantity.

Let us stick for the moment with energy as a physical quantity.

An inherent characteristic of energy is that it cannot be destroyed – ever. Energy is thereby a conserved quantity meaning that there is a fixed amount of energy in the universe we are living in. Energy cannot be formed nor can it be destroyed – it only changes from one form into another. However, as humans we still experience losses of energy whenever we transform it from one form to another, e.g. from heat to electricity. But it is never lost in the physical sense; just in the sense that we are not able to capture and use the forms of energy that the losses may take (read more in the chapter on energy waste). These losses occur as fundamental principles of nature and form the basis of thermodynamics – the scientific term for how energy, work and temperature relate to each other. In practical terms we talk about the energy efficiency of an energy conversion process. For example, the energy efficiency of a gas power plant relates to the amount of energy released (in the form of heat when burning gas as fuel) to the amount of energy that is produced (in the form of electricity).

The mentioning of power plants brings us to energy as a commodity that is produced, traded and consumed. How does this notion relate to the concept of energy as a conserved quantity? To explore the relationship between the two concepts, we should bring our focus to planet Earth. Within Earth’s boundaries, all the energy around us essentially traces back to the sun and geological activity inside the planet. Energy from the sun reaches our planet in the form of electromagnetic radiation, enabling trees and plants to grow via photosynthesis, and driving the weather. As a source for sustainable energy, not only does the sun provide the radiation for photovoltaic power plants, but it also generates wind and rain to drive wind parks and hydropower plants. However, the sun is also the origin of fossil fuels; over millions of years solar radiation powered the growth of trees and plants, converting and storing solar energy as chemical energy. As the plants died, decayed and were buried underground, they transformed – with the help of geothermal heat – into coal, oil or natural gas. When treating energy as a commodity that can be produced and consumed, we are looking at it within the boundaries of planet Earth, which has a steady input of energy in the form of solar radiation. This solar radiation provides us with clean, renewable sources of energy, as well as unsustainable ones, and unfortunately, up until now mankind has favoured the latter.

Figure 2: Energy as a commodity. In the case of fossil fuels, we transform their chemical energy, via combustion, to thermal energy; which, via steam, is turned into motion energy; which, via the turbines’ mechanical energy, is turned into electrical energy. And then we transform the electrical energy again, as we are using it e.g. for heating in our homes, or to power our cars (mechanical energy; motion energy). In this case, the energy can be traded and transported either in the chemical form (e.g. as oil in barrels or pipelines; as gas in containers or pipelines; as batteries) or as electricity (via power lines).

This leads us back to the slightly apocalyptic storyline from the beginning of this chapter. When we transform the chemical energy in fossil fuels to other forms of energy, we release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But why is this a problem? Oil, coal and natural gas are all natural products, derived from the sun. The problem is that the chemical energy in the fossil fuels, in the form of hydrocarbons, has been transformed from solar and geothermal energy accumulated on Earth over millions of years. And now, our industrial activities are releasing this carbon in a matter of a few hundred years, which results in a massive CO2 overload in the atmosphere.

But couldn’t we just recycle the CO2 in the atmosphere to make more energy or manufacture some useful products? With all this precious carbon in the air, we should be set for several human lifetimes. And we could keep using fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the CO2 in the atmosphere was produced in chemical reactions that released large amounts of heat (e.g. in combustion engines burning petrol in vehicles or in power plants burning natural gas), which means that the carbon in CO2 now holds a lot less energy (again, thermodynamics). Compared with some of the ‘original’ fossil fuel molecules (such as methane) CO2 is on a very low energy level. This means that if we were to recycle CO2 into ‘new’ energy or new products, we would need to add large amounts of energy to ‘lift’ the end product to a higher level (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: If we were able to generate new energy sources from carbon dioxide, we would need to first add energy.

From an historical point of view, human harvesting of energy (i.e. converting chemical energy into heat and mechanical energy) has always been a dirty and noisy process, often including chemicals (leaded gasoline, automotive catalysts) harmful to ourselves and our environment. Today, we are painfully aware that the process is also deeply unsustainable – for ourselves and our environment. Consequently, energy is a fundamental part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (see chapter on energy and the Sustainable Development Goals). To attain the Goals we must find new ways to transform energy for our needs in sustainable ways. In this context, when we are talking about renewable energy we mean energy sources that are virtually endless on a human timescale (on a more cosmic timescale, even the sun will eventually go out) (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: Renewable energy sources are related to the same “parents” as fossil fuels. However, we use different processes to extract their energy, with different end results.

Regardless of how we secure the energy needs of our current and future society, all solutions will come with trade-offs and synergies. The ongoing electrification of society will put us at new crossroads, with new sustainability conundrums to consider – for both human and planetary health (see chapter on materials for the electrification of society). Such considerations are an inherent part of every research and development process. However, what we need to do differently from now on is to have a holistic “think first” approach in the development of our future energy system. This means considering all the possible effects any new technology can have on ourselves and our planet. Fortunately, digitalisation has put us in a position to do this. We are now able to collect and analyse vast amounts of data over the whole energy chain, which will allow us to understand and control the different components of an entire energy system. This way, artificial intelligence will help us model and operate new scenarios which facilitate the transition to a truly sustainable energy future (see chapter on energy waste). But, again, this development too will bring new challenges that we need to take into account (see chapters on Internet of Things, homes in the smart grid, cyber security and electrical power grids).

Finally, we will end this chapter on a more philosophical note. In our quest for a sustainable energy future, perhaps we will also need to consider decoupling energy consumption from economic growth? How can we, as a society, improve without consuming more energy? Another way of looking at it could be decoupling economic growth from human progress. Perhaps we will reach a point where less will actually be more – also in terms of energy production and consumption?

WHAT IS ELECTRICITY?

Lina Bertling Tjernberg

Electrical phenomena are forces of nature that have been studied since ancient times. An early discovery was static electricity that occurred when a fur coat was rubbed against amber. The word electricity comes from the Latin electricus and the Greek electron, both of which mean amber. However, the great scientific breakthroughs in electricity did not take place until the 18th and 19th centuries, and their practical applications were delayed until the end of the 19th century. Today, we are completely dependent on electricity for a variety of applications, such as lighting, transport, heating, communication and mathematical calculations.

So how is electricity made? An atom consists of a number of smaller particles with opposite charges that are held together thanks to their electrical attraction to each other. The nucleus of the atom contains protons that have a positive electric charge and neutrons that have no charge, and is surrounded by electrons with a negative charge. An atom with an equal number of protons and electrons is electrically neutral. Friction – such as when a fur coat is rubbed against amber – can cause electrons to move from one material to another. The material that acquires an excess of electrons (in this case the amber) becomes negatively charged and the material that loses electrons (the fur) becomes positively charged. An electric field arises between these positive and negative charges – the greater the difference in the charge, the higher the voltage in the field (see Figure 1). Voltage is measured in the unit volts [V].

An electric current occurs when electrons move from one point to another. The magnitude of the motion – the current – is measured in the unit amperes [A]. Electrical devices are powered by this current of electrons. Figure 2 shows the relationship between current and voltage, as expressed in Ohm's law. The law states that the electric current (i) between two points is equal to the electric voltage (v) divided by the resistance (R) measured in [Ohm]. Resistance is an opposition to the flow of electric current and can be described as a loss in the current transmission.

Figure 1: Electric field.

The electric power system is an infrastructure that moves electrical energy, in the form of electricity, from the energy source to the user (read more in the chapter on electric power systems). To do this in a reliable, safe and efficient way, an electrical system has been developed using a mixture of direct voltage/direct current and alternating voltage/alternating current. Direct current/direct voltage means a constant voltage level, while alternating voltage/ alternating current means that voltage and current change direction with a particular frequency (see Figure 3