Bill blows, but storm is forgotten
28 August 2009
As the tail end of Hurricane Bill whips keenly at our UK shores, albeit a shadow of the tropical storm that lashed Bermuda last week, I am aware there is still an abundance of ‘natural energy’ swirling around that remains untapped from a human perspective.
A recurring theme of this column is that of all main obstacles to be faced by human kind – poverty, starvation, energy, global warming etc – will ultimately be resolved by scientists and engineers. The Earth’s dwindling resources and the concentration of those resources in a small number of countries, not to mention melting ice caps, means that the technology community has a clear and pressing task in tackling the issue of energy supply.
The arguments for renewable energy rage on and yet many of the issues are unresolved. For example, how long does it take for a wind-farm to pay back its carbon footprint generated during its manufacture and operation? There have been suggestions that this could be considerably longer than its projected lifespan. But, from a selfish point of view, if the electronics industry came up with that one technology that would guarantee a carbon-free future for electricity generation by using wind power, tidal or, most likely, solar energy, then it would represent the ultimate ‘killer app’. There is clearly not a single, workable solution to the world’s energy problems or even one that comes close. Sadly, I think that this may well remain the case until a long-term energy crisis, either sparked by lack of resources or by catastrophic disruption to supply, forces governments to take the situation seriously.
The Western World is very good at exporting its idea of democracy around the globe, but it is done through an ideal of fairness irrespective of how well it works. A friend of mine from Ireland once described the effects of its system of proportional representation – the logical limit of a democratic society. The elected government that resulted from this was such a mish-mash of different political parties and the coalition government so diverse, that nothing ever changed. This, he argued, was a good thing. Politicians were kept in check by inertia.
However, whether in the extreme case of proportional representation, or the more usual form of first past the post, democracy does have a fundamental flaw - long term decisions, however important, get pushed to one side. The effect of an ageing population in terms of pensions and health care is a real time bomb waiting to blow up – the consequences for countries which traditionally have no social support network for the elderly, partly because people typically did not reach any great age, is potentially devastating. The amount of resources for this alone quite simply does not exist at the moment. I just take this as one example of where proper plans instigated now would cost the tax-payer so much today to make the political leadership unpopular enough to fail in its next election. Thus, the really big decisions are often avoided. There is no (guaranteed) continuity – serious decisions tend to affect only the term of a single government (typically four or five years). Decisions about what happens after an election are rarely backed by the finance necessary to make them work.
Which brings me back round to harvesting the wind from Hurricane Bill. The UK – a country recently described as having enough wind energy resources alone to be self-sufficient – has recommended that the princely sum of £120m be ear-marked for research into wind energy and a further £60m for tidal. I am not sure that £120m ((US$190m) is enough to develop the technology that will save mankind – to put that in perspective, the top teams participating in Formula 1 were spending two and half times that amount to develop and run their cars for a season. Even then, that money has not been allocated, only suggested.
In other words, a lot of talk, a ‘commitment’ to backing new technology, a suggestion of a sizeable amount of money - but sadly a lack of genuine conviction or intent. It’s a shame because the electronics industry could do with the boost of having a ‘killer app’ at the moment. Saving the world’s energy crisis and combating global warming into the bargain is about as good as killer apps get!
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